Open Source Law

Russ Nelson writes "The U.S. Supreme Court just announced its refusal to review the 5th Circuit's en banc decision that there can be no copyright of privately authored laws offered to U.S. governmental bodies for adoption. The model law itself may be copyrighted, but once it's adopted, the law must be open source. The entire case is laid out on Peter Veeck's page." Slashdot touched on this before, but never really covered this dispute in depth. Here's a nice legal summary of the case.

Comments

Here's an interesting quote

[tkrotchko]

"The Primary Purpose of Copyright Law is not to Provide a Benefit to Authors, But to Provide the Public With Access to Authors' Works."

Fascinating, isn't it?

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[zapp]

Where is that quote from? I couldn't find it in the links...

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[gerf]

"The Primary Purpose of Copyright Law is not to Provide a Benefit to Authors, But to Provide the Public With Access to Authors' Works."

Fascinating, isn't it?

More than fascinating... anyone who follows yro.slashdot or any copywright laws could pull some very helpful court decisions from this one statement alone. Heck, it sort of infers that P2P is legal, especially with copywrighted works. Obviously, that wouldn't stand up in another case, but it's very interesting nevertheless.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Gunsmithy]

Not really, it's just amazing (or not) that major companies can impose their ways on the American public (and government, for that matter) through sheer ignorance.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for your information, and without malice. You should have said "it sort of implies" - you would infer from what was implied... Infer means to make a conclusion.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Buzz_Litebeer]

What is even more interesting is the implications of a copyrighted law...

what would that mean exactly? that every time someone made a public address that cited the law, that they would have to pay royalties to the writer?

Lawyers would have to pay royalties to practice certain kinds of law?

I could just imagine "we dont defend against this firm, because they paid 300 thousand to actually be told what the law is, we cannot therefor know that law since we did not pay the legal royalties on it."

That leaves me lost, and confused.

I mean, its as stupid as say... patenting an on-line auction that was based on a real world model...

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[sacrilicious]

"The Primary Purpose of Copyright Law is not to Provide a Benefit to Authors, But to Provide the Public With Access to Authors' Works."

anyone who follows yro.slashdot or any copywright laws could pull some very helpful court decisions from this one statement alone. Heck, it sort of [implies] that P2P is legal, especially with copywrighted works.

I didn't see this quote in the decision or the analysis, but if I'm to assume it's there then I also would assume that the argument runs in the vein of deciding that no public interest is served by copyrighting laws or restricting their distribution. However, in the case of a copyrighted work, the argument for restricting distribution - at least temporarily - is that the resulting market advantage gives authors incentive to produce works. So I'd be surprised to see this applied to p2p networks (though as someone opposed to intellectual property in general, I'd be delighted. :)

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[autopr0n]

what would that mean exactly? that every time someone made a public address that cited the law, that they would have to pay royalties to the writer?

You mean just like how you have to pay royalties for all the copyrighted works you cite in a paper?

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Thorsett]

(I posted this story a week ago and it was rejected.)

I'm surprised that copyrighted laws are news to so many people. I've been frustrated for years that while you can look up almost all of our local munciple code on line, the building code sections are not published, because they incorporate by reference material copyrighted by the standards organizations. Check your own local code websites and I bet you'll find the same thing.

This odd situation isn't new; this has been standard practice for years. But nobody really noticed until we came to expect instant internet access to government information, since all local governments have copies of the copyrighted building codes available for inspection in the office.

There are some interesting implications of this ruling for software; for example, if a government agency requires software to interoperate with a proprietary standard (e.g., Word document format)....

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[IWannaBeAnAC]

You mean just like how you have to pay royalties for all the copyrighted works you cite in a paper?

In what field(s) does that occur? It is certainly unheard-of in academia. Or was it a joke?

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[cicadia]

what would that mean exactly?

Well, it basically means that you can't go around making copies of the law itself. If you need a copy, you will have to order it from someone who is authorised to make copies, and you will presumably have to pay for it.

Traditionally, this has been the case for large codes such as building codes or electrical codes. These are law, and you can go down to your local branch of government (city hall, legislature, etc) and read the copy they have there, but you can't photocopy the whole thing and take it home with you.

If you were a construction company, or a law firm specialising in defending construction companies (or homeowners against construction companies,) then it would be in your best interest to purchase a copy of the local building codes. You wouldn't have to -- you could do all of your research at city hall -- but it would make good business sense.

These sorts of laws were allowed to be copyrighted in the past because they are generally drafted by large national engineering bodies, who tend to put a lot of work and resources into them. Charging for copies to the people who actually use them offsets much of that cost. It will be interesting to see how this decision affects things the next time the codes are up for review.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Chmarr]

I think you mean 'imply'.

Speakers imply, listeners infer. -- Dct. Robert Goran, Major Crime Squad :)

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Anonymous Coward]

see "sarchasm"

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[ddimas]

Let me see if I got this straight. SBBI wrote up some building codes and got them enacted into law in two municipalities. Somebody decided to print the laws thus enacted. SBBI got upset and said that they had copyright protection. The 5th circuit court disagreed and said copyright does not apply to enacted law. SBBI is really upset and takes this to the Supreme court, which then proceeds to refuse to review the case. SBBI, which had hoped to make $$$ by selling the enacted code at some phenominal markup is still upset?

I'd shoot them just for trying to copyright enacted law.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[BigBadBri]

SBBI produced building codes - it, as a body, put work and thought into those codes.

Surely it has a right to some recompense (even if only a reimbursement of reasonable costs) for its input?

I would propose that the body that first enacts the standards into law should ensure that the producer of the standards is not out of pocket.

Of course, if SBBI has just produced a derivative work of existing (public domain) building regs, then screw 'em, and may they rot in hell for making me defend their position in any way.

But if they have provided any new and useful principles, or performed a useful analysis, then they deserve to be recompensed for their efforts.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Sarchasm: a pit stupid people blunder into while trying to use sarcasm.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[cicadia]

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn't get it.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[TeraCo]

Well, sure. But that depends on whether they 'volunteer' their time or not. They can't volunteer to be on a public recommendations panel and then after the fact demand compensation.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[MerlynEmrys67]

it sort of infers that P2P is legal, especially with copywrighted works. Obviously, that wouldn't stand up in another case, but it's very interesting nevertheless.

I don't see where you got this from. Basically a company creates a work, gets it published into law that you and I has to follow, and then says, you must pay us to be able to know what the law is so you can follow it. If you want to create a law, and have any ability to enforce it, I would hope that people can be allowed to see what the law says (ignorance of the law is no excuse... well here it would be, I couldn't afford the 100 bucks your honour)

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[ddimas]

It was rewarded. It's codes were enacted, any further reward is unethical and should be violently illeagal. If the law becomes private property, then it is time for armed rebellion, because that my dear friend is tyranny.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I lived in your country.

It's well past time for armed rebellion here, but unfortunately, we're not an ex-colony with a constitution and a sense of place.

Give me a .50 Barrett, and a clear line of sight to ....

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[rhizome]

Surely it has a right to some recompense (even if only a reimbursement of reasonable costs) for its input?

Well, aside from getting illegal kickbacks from the industries who benefit from the laws like any other public servant, I don't see where you'd say they have a "right" (read: entitlement) to some benefits of the law. Why would they, isn't good faith participation in the public sector reward enough? If they're so concerned about their standards being used without compensation, then they can sue to keep their standards out of the law and let the standards stay private. You can't have your greed and spread it, too.

The court said that the SBCCI (here's a nudge to actually read the article so you can spell things correctly) specifically comes up with templates to be used as laws. Laws can't be copyrighted, even if the law incorporates copyrighted references. So - and this is covered in some of the transcripts - the SBCCI seems to have chosen a business model incompatible with the internet, and it's just that nobody cared to look laws up in places other than City Hall or the library that this didn't come up before. Huzzah for Mr. Veeck.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[onepoint]

>"The Primary Purpose of Copyright Law is not to Provide a Benefit to Authors, But to Provide the Public With Access to Authors' Works."

most interesting statement, Most people would think that this grants the P2P community alot of room. I would think that it makes the authors even stronger. This would force the public access to be costly to have access to the work's

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[PingPongBoy]

The Primary Purpose of Copyright Law is not to Provide a Benefit to Authors, But to Provide the Public With Access to Authors' Works

My intuition: some authors would be very reluctant to publish if they have no protection

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Anonymous Coward]

No personal offense intended, but to anyone outside this cottage industry, this is what's viewed as an anti-democratic "blah blah excuse". The public will be patient to wait for an appropriate workaround that continues to ensure the public right to easily access their own laws.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[smagruder]

We probably shouldn't assume that authors who write only for accumulating wealth are the best of the authors. I think society will survive nicely. Especially consider this case only applies to only one genre of publications - the only one that ought to be public domain from the get-go.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[fermion]

It seems the underlying assumption would be that if the authors are provided some limited protections, then they will be more likely to release their work to the public, and in exchange for such protection such work will enter into the public domain at some agreed to later date. In this way, the primary consideration is the public good and not the authors.

While I believe the P2P networks can help authors, it is still a point of debate whether they provide sufficient protection to encourage authors to produce and release quality work. If the quote speaks to anything, it speaks to the unreasonable long periods before the work is released to public domain.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[macwhiz]

SBCCI may have put work and thought into those codes... but I suspect that their motive wasn't an altruistic urge to help humanity by helping government. Perhaps their motive was to make oodles of cash by selling copies of the code.

I think that SBCCI, and the other building-code organizations, thought they had the ultimate legal monopoly. By convincing municipalities to enact building codes that amount to "see SBCCI's code," they'd retain the copyright and soak every Joe Handyman that wanted to repair a light switch.

I tried to get a copy of my local building codes recently, before putting new shingles on the roof. Although the building inspector was helpful in telling me what I needed to know, I wanted to see the whole text of the law.

I went to my library. They don't have a copy; it's a small town and they can't afford it. There's several different model codes, each costing exorbitant sums, and they change every two or three years.

I tried to get a copy from another state library. It seems that there's two copies of the code I need in the state; both of those copies are "reference" and can't leave their libraries.

I could go down to the Building Inspector's office and photocopy the code. That'd take a long time, cost a lot, and if the codes were copyrighted it'd be illegal.

How am I to comply with the building codes when I make repairs? As others have pointed out, I could be fined or even jailed for failure to comply.

Before this ruling, my choice would have to be: cough up the dough to the extortionists.

Thankfully, this ruling eliminates that copyright, and hopefully the codes will show up online soon. Perhaps low-cost paperback editions will come out.

Perhaps, too, towns will have to do some work of their own to create these codes, instead of accepting model codes that were created in hopes of a cash windfall. I know it will be tough, but I'm sure that the towns can work together, and work with other organizations, such as Underwriters' Laboratories, to develop "open source model codes" that can be used by many towns.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[flacco]

Heck, it sort of infers that P2P is legal, especially with copywrighted works.

No, it doesn't. Copyright provides public access to authors' works precisely by protecting it, much in the same way that patents are supposed to protect inventions (despite the patent system being hopelessly broken and ransacked by large corporate interests).

It permits authors to publish stuff - i.e., make it public - without fear of being ripped off.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[flacco]

These sorts of laws were allowed to be copyrighted in the past because they are generally drafted by large national engineering bodies, who tend to put a lot of work and resources into them. Charging for copies to the people who actually use them offsets much of that cost. It will be interesting to see how this decision affects things the next time the codes are up for review.

It sounds almost as if you're suggesting that copyrightable law text is reasonable. It's got to be one of the most retarded things I've ever heard.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[the_Librarian]

And why exactly would it be a bad idea if you could make a photocopy of the text? Sure, it would cost an arm and a leg at $0.10 per page (or whatever the copy machine at city hall costs), and take forever, and you'd be stuck with a huge stack of papers. On the other hand, there's nothing keeping the "national engineering bodies" from producing, at negligible additional cost, a reference CD with PDFs and/or a printed manual of the relevant code, and selling that to individuals who want and "use" them. It's the service that's being sold, not the (non-copyrighted) material.

Legally, the PDFs (or whatever format) would be protected, not on basis of the law itself being copyrighted, but because the product is composed of a service, which would be governed by a use license or suchlike (yes, I know, that's another broken model, but one thing at a time). The law itself could and probably should be available online, and if you think that will kill sales of a potential product, just go into your favorite computer store, and see how many manuals get sold for information readily available on the internet.

If we have "national engineering bodies" that are writing laws (which they sort of are, but are sort of also just providing expertise to lawmakers), then the cost of effort that actually becomes law should be borne (and probably already is) by the taxpayers. If, on the other hand, these laws are written in ways that tend to make things favorable (read 'financially advantageous') to the writers, then they already have their reward, and don't need to have a revenue stream from folks who are being governed by work they have done in whole or in part.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[cicadia]

I'm not saying that it's reasonable; on the contrary, I believe that it is absurd for a society not to collectively own the laws under which it lives.

What I am saying is that this is the way these laws have been developed; the existing trade-off allowed goverments to adopt as law very high quality building codes, electrical codes, etc., at almost no cost.

If this had not been the case, then goverments would have had to spend a lot of money to commission specialists to write these codes for them. I am not saying whether I feel that society is better or worse for not having spent that money, simply that the situation has changed now, and I am curious to see what will happen the next time these newly public domain laws are up for review.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[mpe]

However, in the case of a copyrighted work, the argument for restricting distribution - at least temporarily - is that the resulting market advantage gives authors incentive to produce works.

Has anyone come up with a way to actually test if this is currently the case. (Even though it may have been the case a couple of hundred years ago.) It's not exactly hard to find examples of current copyright law acting to discourage creation and publication.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[mpe]

I would propose that the body that first enacts the standards into law should ensure that the producer of the standards is not out of pocket.

There is no such thing as an intrinsic right to not be "out of pocket". It would only be if a government specifically contracted some party to draft standards that, IMHO, they are owed anything.

But if they have provided any new and useful principles, or performed a useful analysis, then they deserve to be recompensed for their efforts.

If they did this off their own back why should anyone pay them anything? Even if someone is prepared to pay them then whatever they did is only worth what someone is prepared to pay them.
Paying someone just because they did something sounds an awful lot like Communism.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Darioush]

Here is the most stupid thing i've ever seen in my __ENTIRE__ life!!! Get the hell with all of the copyrights. I think they are actually of no use except humor purposes.. --

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Wah]

I know it will be tough, but I'm sure that the towns can work together, and work with other organizations, such as Underwriters' Laboratories, to develop "open source model codes" that can be used by many towns.

That's pretty much what is going to happen. Now one can take someone else's code and modify it to scratch local itches. Publish said code and the cycle continues. Since this ruling will open the code all across the country, it shouldn't be too hard to find something, somewhere, that's pretty close to what a certain municipality desires.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Planesdragon]

Has anyone come up with a way to actually test if this is currently the case. (Even though it may have been the case a couple of hundred years ago.) It's not exactly hard to find examples of current copyright law acting to discourage creation and publication.

Well, capitalism works for that.

Do you read books, listen to music, or play video games?

OK, now--are the free ones better than the for-pay ones?

In general, the answer is "no." And, more to the point, when someone's good enough to make art that we like, shouldn't they be able to do that full-time?

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[jandrese]

It's worse than you think. Building codes tend to change every year, which means builders and inspectors have to buy those books year after year. These things are a racket.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Anonymous Coward]

lessee: atheist, vegetarian, linux user. have i missed anything?>

You damn breeders.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[AlamedaStone]

"Imply", Chmarr, or "implode"?

In other news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Freakin common sense strikes court system. Film at 11:00

Re:In other news.

[onepoint]

as much as you want it to be common sense, it's not.

you write something, and then the government takes it and creates a law utilising all your text.

you don't get a dime for your work. and you might still be subjected to lawsuits ( hey what you wrote might be wrong ). so there ends the public participation. for if I build a house to the spect that they tell me to and it falls down, then I am taking then to court also

Re:In other news.

[smagruder]

you write something, and then the government takes it and creates a law utilising all your text

Make that: The government "takes it" after being offered it on a silver platter as an apparent good public deed for the good of the local community.

All law is public domain--that's the American way *and* now, the Law of the Land.

Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[SoCalChris]

I'm using the latest milestone of Firebird, and the entire article rendered about an inch wide, with several inches of whitespace on the sides. Anyone else get it this way?

http://www.gtwassociates.com/answers/veeck.htm

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

it was made with FrontPage, what do you expect?

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

mozilla 1.3rc2 does it as well.....fuck you sir, whomever modded the parent offtopic

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[afidel]

Whoever wrote that page is an idiot, first off the use tables for formatting (ugh), then they set the left and right columns to 720 pixels each absolute values rather than %ages. IE aparantly just ignores the width declaration and renders it how it wishes.

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that tables are not good for formatting, and you should use CSS instead. I'm just curious why tables are bad for formatting? Also, do you know of a good free online tutorial on using CSS for formatting>

thanks

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[ErikZ]

What's wrong with using tables for formatting?

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[dekashizl]

Whoever wrote that page is an idiot, first off the use tables for formatting (ugh), then they set the left and right columns to 720 pixels each absolute values rather than %ages.

Since the parent/parent was already modded Offtopic, I figure it's safe to chime in here without getting further demoted...

I agree that if both left and right columns were set to 720 pixels, then the author messed up. But using tables for formatting is perfectly acceptable, as it consistently and clearly works, has always worked, and does not create verbose or complex HTML.

Your distaste for table-based formatting reminds me of assholes on inline skates (aka roller blades) who mock people who still ride the old school 4-wheeled roller skates, like they haven't caught up with what's cool and proper. Get over it, it works.

PS I ride hover-skates, so fuck you all.

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://glish.com/css/

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[afidel]

The W3C has a ton of online resources linked from their learning CSS page Here

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

The MSDN Library CSS section is a good source, just ignore the MS extensions.

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[oordaz]

i'm using the "latest milestone of Firebird" and my queries are running faster than ever.

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[FCKGW]

Here's the problem:

<meta content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0" name=GENERATOR>

Did anyone else notice that the page is 16KB, but the text on it is only 8KB?

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha, nice screen name. You should have gone all out though and used FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8.

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I just call you fhqwhgads?

Re:Link renders bad on Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Afidel

I am guilty as charged for the snafu on the Veeck page. GTW Associates is a one person outfit ... I am chief cook, waiter and bottle washer. I apologize to those who got the skinny column

I have found Front Page to be at about the right level for me as a non geek to keep the site up and running.

You were exactly correct. The main problem seems to have been the mistake in setting the table elements to 720 pixels on either side of the main box. After I got word of the problem and fixed it, it is my understanding the browser incompatabilities went away?

Even with the "problem", GTW Associates is grateful for the exposure of the GTW Veeck review by way of the slashdot notice. There are big time implications for SDOs who depend on sales of copyrighted documents. The Veeck page had 6500 hits Tuesday and 2300 hits Thursday. Typical hits for the site are 500 to 1000 per day

Welcome slashdot members to the site www.gtwassociates.com for more standards policy news and interpretation... stuff there on Rambus and a collection of IPR policies of SDOs. There is also a complementary Insights newsletter and database of US/EU/Japan government notices of standards and technology policy

And I welcome corrections or suggestions for improvement

George W gtw@gtwassociates.com

Was this a joke?

[zapp]

First they come up with the rediculous idea to copyright a business model (imagine having to pay a royalty for having a Point of Sales in your shop)...

then they tried to copyright laws??? Give me a break.

Re:Was this a joke?

[Red Warrior]

Unfortunately, no.
Numerous laws. Esp building codes and the like are proposed by trade/business associations who have copyrigthted the document. Then they sell the code to those who would like to follow the law. Usually, they insist that the laws in question not be posted electronically, as it infringes on thier copyright. Though, they graciously grant that you can go to a public building and peruse the "offical" copy. fer instance [pdf] this is where you can buy your very own copies of the laws in question in this case.

Re:Was this a joke?

[nomadic]

No. The situation is this:

A private organization creates some specifications for building. They hold the copyright on this, as they are the creators.

The organization offers the codes to municipal governments for adoption into law.

The private organization wants to keep the copyright over the material itself. They don't want to lose control of these specifications; if that happened then another individual or private organization could freely use the specifications in their own work (such as in building handbook).

The court decided that since the private organization in question had offered the specifications to governments for use, they didn't retain ownership over what was adopted into law.

Now I think the courts made a wise decision. But, you know, it's not a cut-and-dried issue; you can make arguments for both sides. The plaintiffs in this aren't trying to copyright laws--their copyright existed BEFORE the laws were enacted. The question is whether their copyright survives the process of being adopted by governmental entities, and I know this is heresy on slashdot, but not every legal case is a matter of common sense--these are complicated issues.

Re:Was this a joke?

[CowboyMeal]

You patent a business model, you don't copyright it.

Unless someone sculpted a physical model of the building your business resides in, then I guess you could copyright a business model.

/pedantic

Re:Was this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Next thing you know they'll remove the e from rediculous.

Re:Was this a joke?

[anthony_dipierro]

The question is whether their copyright survives the process of being adopted by governmental entities

Sort of, but not exactly. The court agrees that their copyright survives the process of being adopted by government entities. However, it also becomes an uncopyrightable fact, in its entirety and without modification.

It's kind of an anomoly of copyright law. If two people independently come up with the exact same poem (for instance), they both have independent copyrights on the exact same text. This ruling creates something similar. As law, it is public domain, but as model codes, the copyright stands.

Re:Was this a joke?

[jc42]

No joke at all. Here's the scenario:

You (the defendant): I demand to know the charges against me and what law I've violated!

Prosecutor: Sorry; the law is copyrighted, and we don't have signed permission from the copyright owner to give you a copy of that information.

Re:Was this a joke?

[cait56]

then they tried to copyright laws??? Give me a break

Imagine having to pay to obtain access to something you must comply with.

Only standards bodies are allowed to pull nonsense like that.

Now if we can only get some municipality to legislate compliance...

Re:Was this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that why the US is holding people, without charges, in Guantanamo Bay?

Re:Was this a joke?

[PingPongBoy]

The organization offers the codes to municipal governments for adoption into law.

The private organization wants to keep the copyright over the material itself. They don't want to lose control of these specifications; if that happened then another individual or private organization could freely use the specifications in their own work (such as in building handbook).


What if you found that someone was breaking law XYZ but the law was copyrighted? Or if you are required to do something according to law XYZ?

Then how do you explain in writing what is happening if you can't even say XYZ?

Re:Was this a joke?

[flacco]

But, you know, it's not a cut-and-dried issue; you can make arguments for both sides. The plaintiffs in this aren't trying to copyright laws--their copyright existed BEFORE the laws were enacted.

As far as I'm concerned, as soon as I'm legally obligated to follow a set of laws, I should have the right to own a copy of those laws free of charge, regardless of whether they stem from something that someone holds a copyright to.

I may not be able to photocopy the original documents, but I sure should be able to photocopy the law texts in full, retype them into a document, and distribute them freely.

Re:Was this a joke?

[slipstick]

Well actually this is common sense.

An analogy with physical property would suggest that the government has the power to put any copyrighted work into "eminent domain" making that work a public work. Of course this analogy would imply that the government must pay restitution to the copyright holder just like with physical property under your constitution's 5th amendment (assuming your an American).

Of course I personally don't fully like this analogy because I don't believe in "intellectual property". But for the sake of this discussion I'm going to ignore my disdain of the concept.

A different but equally valid "common sense" argument would follow exactly what the court decreed. Specifically that a copyrighted work remains the property of the copyright holder until such time that the government enacts it in to law either directly or by reference. Since the law is the property of the people once enacted into law the copyrighted work becomes the property of the people or at least that "version" of it does. This makes totally good common sense. Especially when you add the fact that it is purely by government decree that the idea of copyright exists anyway.

It would not have been "common sense" for the courts to have ruled otherwise. Since than the people are subject to the tyranny of a private individual or group and their own whims as to how the laws should read.

Summary?

[TheFlyingGoat]

That summary page is awful... 1 column of text, 100px wide, tens of pages long. Can someone explain this in plain English for we 'IANAL' folk? What does this mean for the average person?

Re:Summary?

[clacour]

I'm not a lawyer either, so take this explanation with a grain of salt...

Peter Veeck wrote a bunch of codes and standards for buildings and utilities. As best I can tell, he had them up on a Web site, available at no charge to anyone who wanted them. (Being available free like that does not affect his copyright - he would still own it.)

He then proposed these standards to some of the nearby towns as proposals for laws.

At least two of the cities took him up on it, and passed the codes into law in their municipalities.

SBCCI made a reference to the codes as being "public domain". Veeck objected to this.

As best I can determine, he was not trying to prevent anyone from accessing the information, he was just saying "This is my text, I wrote it, I have the copyright on it".

The court said, in effect, "Not after those cities turned it into law!".

There seem to be two key elements: First, Veeck offered his writeup of the codes to the towns to be made into law (i.e., they didn't steal it from him). Second, they incorporated it by reference, i.e. saying something to the effect of "The codes that Peter Veeck wrote up are now law." (I didn't dig deep enough to see whether that was his idea or theirs.)

All laws are public domain (having to pay a fee to see a law that you are bound by might start another revolution...). What the court said here is that by that specific code (the one he wrote and (I think) had on his web site) becoming law, the "public domainness" of law overrode his (ordinarily perfectly good) copyright, so SBCCI is right, and what he wrote is now in the public domain.

Re:Summary?

[spiritraveller]

Actually, you have it reversed. Peter Veeck did not write the codes. He published the codes that SBCCI wrote.

SBCCI threatened to sue him for publishing the codes. Peter Veeck sued first for a declaratory judgment in a Texas federal court. He probably did this to eliminate the risk that they would drag him to federal court in Alabama (their location).

Re:Summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

This summary is at total variance with the actual case. It should be modded down to 0.

I may be just dumb, but...

[Gunsmithy]

If a law is in effect, how can copyrights affect it?

I mean, let's say I said that "Nobody can eat cheese on Tuesday." What would happen...would I collect a nickel for every cheese-busting operation in the USA, or would I be the only one able to use it?

Re:I may be just dumb, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but wouldn't it just be the text of the law that was copyright? So it would be publishing the law that would require the nickel, not enforcing it.

Re:I may be just dumb, but...

[geekee]

If you owned the copyright for the text of a law, you could charge a royalty every time the govt. printed a copy of it, or refuse to allow them to make copies altogether.

Re:I may be just dumb, but...

[MrLint]

I gotta say it takes some balls to even try and press this idea. Imagine a private company being able to control the distribution of the law? Even in my wildest darkest conspiratorial nightmares have I never dreamed of such a thing. Secret legislation passed into law. Only way to see if is by corporate permission. Imagine environmental passed in secret under NDA. You can never find out if the corporation that wrote them is abiding because its under copyright. Imagine (more) asinine consumer criminalization laws under secret copyright. You will no longer be allowed to know what you are being charged for.

Re:I may be just dumb, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some municipal laws define measures and methods of building construction and lot layout (something related to zone laws, I guess). Those measures are part of a document that was copyrighted by very nice people who thought they had found a loophole to make money selling copies of the law (in order to build anything you would need to know the law and therefore would need a copy of it, right?).

Well, the loophole is now closed. I love it when common sense prevails in the court system.

Re:I may be just dumb, but...

[fussman]

nobody poops on wednesday

Re:first!

[Anonymous Coward]

not only did you fail it, you failed it miserably.

Enact Linux

[sleepingsquirrel]

Someone should slip the source code for Linux in one of those mamoth appropriation bills Congress passes right before the end of session. Since the lawmakers never read the bills they vote on, and law becomes uncopyrightable *presto* no more SCO problems.

Re:Enact Linux

[ender81b]

Then you would have no GPL and no restrictions upon who uses/distributes the code.

Slashbots are always quick to condemm copyright law and seldom realize that it is because of copyright law that things like Linux and BSD are able to be what they are.

Re:Enact Linux

[DeltaSigma]

Actually, BSD would be a poor example. The only reasons the BSDs remain free is because there remains free versions out there. There's someone willing to maintain a free version. But by the very nature of the BSD license a company can take BSD close the source, make changes (or not) and sell it to consumers for a very pretty penny (usually embedded in hardware). The BSD license does not force anybody to keep their copy open-source, nor does it force them to distribute the work they put into it for free. This is the difference between Free-source and Open-source.

Re:Enact Linux

[jdclucidly]

You fail to realize that without copyright law, individuals and organizations wouldn't be able to restrict distribution, either, therefore abolishing the very problems that RMS created the GPL to address.

I've always thought of the GPL as "Copyleft". If "Copyright" sits at one extreme, "Copyleft" sits on the other essentially using Copyright law against itself. Public domain (the complete non-existance of "expressive monopolies") sits comfortably in the center.

Read Stallman's works: it's very clear that he believes that copyright is "immoral". Indeed, IIRC, he even once used Jefferson's natural law argument to justify his position. RMS is a smart guy.

Today's ruling affirms that the distribution of knowledge of law is not restrictable.

Re:Enact Linux

[evilWurst]

That would strip the GPL from it, making it fully public domain...meaning any company could pull an embrace-and-extend on it and close the results.

A better solution would be to slip the SCO source into the bill :)

Re:Enact Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that *BSD is free-source is just more proof that *BSD is in fact dying.

Re:Enact Linux

[phliar]

... it is because of copyright law that things like Linux and BSD are able to be what they are.

This statement is completely false.

If there were no copyright law, any source code would leak out. Evil Corporation Inc. incorporates "our" free code into their process? No problem; sooner or later there would be employees that are either disgruntled or sympathetic to The Cause; their code would leak out and become public knowledge. Since there is no copyright law, there is no culpability for any free software hacker who uses this code, regardless of whether or not the employee violated an NDA or broke any laws while leaking the code.

The GPL plays a role in free software, but only because of the way our present copright law is written. Remove copyright and you remove the necessity for the GPL. Remember that in the "good ol' days" that RMS talks about at MIT, there effectively was no copyright; customers could get whatever source code they wanted, and would contribute any improvements back to the manufacturer and the user community. It was only because some manufacturer (of a printer?) refused to divulge the source that RMS got launched on Gnu.

Note: nowhere in this article is there any claim or statement about whether or not Gnu and/or RMS are good or evil; just some inferences and history.

Re:Enact Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Without copyright we'd still have DRM, and we'd still have hidden source code. So without copyright law we'd still have some of the problems that the GPL addresses.

Re:Enact Linux

[aardvarkjoe]

You fail to realize that without copyright law, individuals and organizations wouldn't be able to restrict distribution, either, therefore abolishing the very problems that RMS created the GPL to address.

Getting rid of copyright is only one part of what RMS wants. He always wants to make it illegal to distribute a binary without source code. If copyright law (and thus the GPL) was to be declared invalid today, there would be nothing stopping anyone from distributing Linux binaries and refusing to distribute source -- one of the main reasons why people choose to use the GPL over other licenses.

Re:Enact Linux

[ender81b]

Ah but without copyright law a company could take portions of the code and compile them into Product X and not release the source to the general public. That would violate the spirit of open-source software.

Re:Enact Linux

[ender81b]

The GPL plays a role in free software, but only because of the way our present copright law is written. Remove copyright and you remove the necessity for the GPL.

Really? So what prevents company X from taking Open Source code and inserting into product Y without giving credit or releasing the modifications?

No copyright would basically turn the software world into a BSD style license.

Re:Enact Linux

[anthony_dipierro]

Someone should slip the source code for Linux in one of those mamoth appropriation bills Congress passes right before the end of session.

Wouldn't work. The work would be public domain as law, but it would be copyrighted as code. When you compile, you'd still be creating a derivative work, and would still be violating the copyright.

Re:Enact Linux

[leshert]

Then you would have no GPL and no restrictions upon who uses/distributes the code.

Not true... according to the material at this site, the Solicitor General is limiting the effect to organizations. So for any code for which an individual (a 'natural person') owns the copyright, that copyright can't be removed by incorporation into a law.

You see, the USC specifically prohibits the kind of action you're talking about, which is why I'm a little confused about the Solicitor's reasoning . He seems to be splitting hairs between copyright owned by a natural person and copyright owned by an organization--not that I'm against the restriction of the rights of corporations as opposed to humans...

It would seem more logical, if the USC rule stands, to prohibit incorporation of non-public works into law, although given the history of doing just that, that may not be feasible.

Re:Enact Linux

[Famatra]

"Read Stallman's works"

Does anyone have any links to some of the stuff he published?

It would be ironic that for a person who thinks copyright is immoral you had to buy his book to read his arguement ;).

Re:Enact Linux

[lactose99]

All it takes is one insider to leak the code and this argument in moot. Remember, no copyrights?

Re:Enact Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

If there were no copyright law, any source code would leak out. Evil Corporation Inc. incorporates "our" free code into their process? No problem; sooner or later there would be employees that are either disgruntled or sympathetic to The Cause; their code would leak out and become public knowledge.

There are, however, trade secrets and NDAs to deal with these situations.

Re:Enact Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read before you hit reply? I guess so, since you made it through the first paragraph to post a reply to the second, but as though oblivious. You could at least criticize his answer to your question, which he bothered to type in advance.

Who moderated this up? Kneejerk we-hates-RMS posse?

Re:Enact Linux

[anthony_dipierro]

Stallman doesn't think copyright is immoral. The GPL is copyrighted.

Re:Enact Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman argues that ownership of software (restriction of users' rights to improve and redistribute it) is immoral. The GPL's novel use of copyright protects works from the restrictions others would impose (via copyright).

Re:Enact Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

That's much different from saying that Stallman believes that copyright is immoral.

Re:Enact Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

The spirit of open source software is in the giving, not in the taking.

Re:Enact Linux

[jdclucidly]

GNU Philosophy

Re:Enact Linux

[jdclucidly]

Seventh paragraph, first sentance.

I'm having trouble finding the Jefferson reference.

Re:Enact Linux

[anthony_dipierro]

Copying unix source code is only one of the many things which is regulated by copyright law. Clearly RMS would like to severely change copyright law, especially with regard to software and software documentation, but it's also clear that he wouldn't want to eliminate it completely. The GPL, the GFDL, and the copyright of the GPL itself all impose restrictions beyond that which would be caused by the elimination of copyright. If RMS really believed in the elimination of copyright these licenses would all look more like this.

Re:Enact Linux

[jdclucidly]

Did find this:

"I don't call this copying piracy, because that is a propaganda word. I don't think it is wrong to copy and share information. Governments can pass laws against it, but that does not make it wrong, just illegal." -RMS from here

Re:Enact Linux

[jdclucidly]

Woops, meant here

Re:Enact Linux

[chthonicdaemon]

I guess reading stuff before answering is too hard... That's what the parent was talking about -- people will leak code (unless you have some military-style security on your coding compound). It's what coders do -- they talk to one another about what they did and how they did it. This is probably how you learned a lot of what you know about coding.

Copyrights and `intellectual property' laws stop this natural communication. So in answer to your question (in addition to that parent link on your post), if there were no copyrights the company would see code leaking out and would have no legal way to stop that from happening expept for NDAs (RMS is against these, too). So the earth would continue to spin and code would be spread as it always has.

On the topic of credit, that's just courtesy. In the academic world, there is no law requiring you state your sources or give credit -- they could sue you for plagarism, but only if you quoted verbatim. The credit for ideas used is based on the mindset of moral people, not on law. Also, I think the BSD license requires you to keep the license text or some form of credit visible in the program you write, so no copyright would not be like the BSD license.

Re:Enact Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Who moderated this up? Kneejerk we-hates-RMS posse?

I moderated it up JUST TO PISS YOU OFF!! MUHUHAHAHA!!

sike

Re:Enact Linux

[capologist]

Heh! Shades of Zenon Panoussis vs. Scientology.

Re:Enact Linux

[mpe]

I've always thought of the GPL as "Copyleft". If "Copyright" sits at one extreme, "Copyleft" sits on the other essentially using Copyright law against itself.

But in a way which is not dissimilar from the part of the US Constitution which allows copyright to exist in the first place.

Re:Enact Linux

[phliar]

So what prevents company X from taking Open Source code and inserting into product Y without giving credit or releasing the modifications?

Nothing. But since there's no copyright law, any source that leaked out from a company is fair game to go back into free software, completely legally -- regardless of whether or not the person that did the leaking violated an NDA while doing so.

Saying "no copyright would basically turn the software world into a BSD style license" is an empty statement -- in a world with no copyright a license is meaningless.

Re:Enact Linux

[ender81b]

No I read it, I just dismissed that part of his reasoning as naive thinking. While they can freely distrubute code, it wouldn't be copyrighted, the company they work for can freely fire them for distrubuting the code.

I just don't think it is really something that would happen.

Re:Enact Linux

[ender81b]

Any source that leaked would also lead to the immediate firing of any employee. YOu would also see, I'm guessing, draconion controls on source access and such.

Just because something isn't copyrighted doesn't mean that people will leak it. There are still serious consequences that can occur such as loss of your job, et al.

Also, wishing for no copyright is an idle dream, more realalistically a shorter copyright term is much better.

Re:Enact Linux

[chthonicdaemon]

I don't know the labour laws in your country, but in mine (South Africa) you would have to have a contractual obligation not to distribute the code (like an NDA) before they could fire you for doing so. If enough people refuse to sign NDAs, they will go away. Perhaps not all that probable, but certainly possible.

I must concede one point to you, though. All this talk of abolishing copyright is not very probable. I guess that's what you're saying. All we are saying is that the world could work without them. Maybe not this one, with the current mindset, but in the future it could work. I think that copyright will blow up eventually as it becomes less and less enforcable. But granted, that is quite a while off.

What would the founding fathers think?

[User 956]

When Thomas Jefferson put the idea of intellectual property into the Constitution of the United States, he did so because he realized that information leaks; once people learn something, they can reuse that knowledge. Jefferson believed that if there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. Writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not create art. So in the US Constitution, it says:

Congress shall have the power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

The reason why this is important is spelled out in Jefferson's own writings:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it...He who receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should be spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature ... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

How far are we going to let the copyrighters go? We need to remind people that copyright, like most laws in the US, is a balance between two forces, and the scale should not be tipped too far to one side.

Re:What would the founding fathers think?

[isoga]

Jefferson also said:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea."

Which I think is very sensible dave

Re:What would the founding fathers think?

[Anonymous Coward]

. Jefferson believed that if there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. Writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not create art.

Would not? Not at all? No inventions before patent law? No writing or art before copyright law? I'm astounded.

Re:What would the founding fathers think?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "also" like in the post you were responding to ?

Not reading the article is one thing, but not reading the comment before you launch in with your one bit of party trivia . . . jeez.

Re:What would the founding fathers think?

[Anonymous Coward]

He also said

"If nature has made any one"

Did you even read the quote before replying? Your quote was part of the second quote from the parent. And cutting off a quote before the qualifying clause is quite obviously misrepresenting the quote.

Re:What would the founding fathers think?

[isoga]

damn i suck

Re:What would the founding fathers think?

[AVGVSTVS]

Firstly, Jefferson did not write the constitution, he was in France at the time as I recall, Madison wrote a large portion of it. Secondly, Jefferson was opposed to intellectual property laws, he had insisted on a ban on monopolies to be included in the Bill of Rights.

Re:What would the founding fathers think?

[aardvarkjoe]

Would not? Not at all? No inventions before patent law? No writing or art before copyright law? I'm astounded.

The phrase "writers would not write," can just as easily mean "some writers would not write," as well as "no writers would write." The OP perhaps should have been a little more specific, but his statement wasn't incorrect.

Re:What would the founding fathers think?

[Alan Hicks]

When Thomas Jefferson put the idea of intellectual property into the Constitution of the United States

Thmoas jefferson did NOT put the idea of intellectual property into the Constitution. In fact, he put nothing at all into the Constitution. Why? Thomas Jefferson wasn't at the Constitutional Convention.

Re:What would the founding fathers think?

[Anonymous Coward]

The phrase "writers would not write," can just as easily mean "some writers would not write," as well as "no writers would write." The OP perhaps should have been a little more specific, but his statement wasn't incorrect.

I understand the purpose of patent and copyright law is to encourage inventors, writers and artists, but I take strong exception to the flat statement, "would not". As you say, probaby just poor phrasing on the part of the original poster, but even so, that's what they said and I felt it needed to be challenged.

Public Domain vs OpenSource

[TokyoBoy]

This should really be considered "Public Domain" law rather then OpenSource. OpenSource, by definition is copyrighted material. While material in the public domain is without copyright.

Re:Public Domain vs OpenSource

[GigsVT]

How about Open Source vs Free Software.

"Open source" really says nothing about the copyright or license restrictions, only that the source is available in some way to the general public.

"Free Software" means software protected by copyright, but distributed under a license the protects the rights of the public to modify and redistribute the software.

I agree with your basic sentiment though, calling legislation "open source" is kinda dumb. It should rightfully be called "public domain".

Re:Public Domain vs OpenSource

[axxackall]

OpenSource, by definition is copyrighted material.

...or copylefted in case of GPL.

What it means.

[Anonymous Coward]

It means that the page is not Mozilla friendly. Try a different browser. It looks fine in Konqueror.

Re:What it means.

[afidel]

No, the page is not logic friendly, the left and right columns have absolute pixel values for widths and the middle column has no stated size, Mozilla renders it as requested while still fitting the page in the screen width, IE just does what it wants (and aparantly so does Konqueror).

Re:What it means.

[HTH NE1]

I use Mozilla 1.3 and it renders a little wide for my browser. But then I have a userContent.css client-side stylesheet that overrides table and cell widths, allowing the cells to expand and contract according to the needs of the content.

The problem is in the markup. The table is defined to be 720 pixels wide. The first row is 670 and spans all three columns. The second row defines the first column to be 720 pixels wide, the middle undefined, and the third to be 720 pixels wide. Third row is structured the same as the first.

So the content ends up squished between two columns of 720 pixels width in a table which becomes at least 1440 pixels wide.

But I'd normally assume that the engine would compress them for not utilizing at least that much space with flowing content. Do you happen to have TABLE { table-format: fixed; } in your userContent.css to speed up the rendering of websites? If so, you have far too much confidence in the competence of web page designers!

Good lord

[cultobill]

That site is ugly. Is it just mozilla, or does eveyone have the problem of all the text being in a 20 character column?

Anyway, doesn't that seem like common sense? How could a law not be public? If a law was copyrighted, does that mean I couldn't reproduce it for the purposes of telling people the laws? What if I gave a (paid) class on laws to be careful of (obscure laws, maybe)?

A breath of fresh air as someone shows our legal system hasn't gone completely insane...

Re:Good lord

[sulli]

Maybe they're riffing on the classic look of Suck, the dear departed daily?

Re:Good lord

[Anonymous Coward]

Select all.

Copy.

Switch to an editor.

Paste.

Hey, it's legible!

Re:Good lord

[molarmass192]

Welcome to the wonderful world of FrontPage, the premiere tool for massacring HTML. The problem is that their TABLE and TD widths don't add up. They define the table as 720 wide, and then define 3 columns, including 2 with widths of 720, exluding the middle one where the text is embedded. Konqueror is a little more forgiving of this and renders it fine.

Re:Good lord

[HTH NE1]

Of course, that the middle column is not of fixed width is the only thing right about the page. It lets the text consume the space it needs. Unfortunately, the other columns bizarrely took their share first and weren't collapsed for not utilizing it (as previous Netscape versions did). Anyway, I use this:

/* Override fixed-HTML-width tables */
table[width] { width: auto ! important }
td[width] { width: auto ! important }
th[width] { width: auto ! important }
col[width] { width: auto ! important }
spacer { display: none ! important }
img[height="1"] { display: none ! important }

Gets rid of all that nasty fixed-table-width-for-layout crap which is mostly unnecessary.

Well, that was a refreshing bit of sanity.

[jcr]

Glad to see the court doing the obviously correct thing.

The rather shocking thing is that this matter was ever litigated in the first place. The plaintiffs should be ashamed of themselves.

-jcr

Open sourcing isn't the issue

[Bingo Foo]

The problem is that they won't allow anonymous CVS commits.

Update June 3065, 2003???

[Superwraith]

Wtf kind of calander do lawyers use????

This is Socialism at its worst

[Anonymous Coward]

How can the government justify taking away the property rights of the corporations that write our laws?

Without private ownership of our laws, what incentive will there be for corporations to write innovative new laws? Now that there is no way for businesses to make money writing laws, our nation's lawmaking process is going to wither up and die.

Re:This is Socialism at its worst

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy fscking troll! Where's my damned flamethrower?!?

Re:This is Socialism at its worst

[TheDauthi]

... And this is a problem?

"Open source"

[sulli]

WTF? Are laws only in force when compiled to machine code?

The law is public domain. Use the correct term, desire for buzzword compliance notwithstanding.

Re:"Open source"

[Xerithane]

The law is public domain. Use the correct term, desire for buzzword compliance notwithstanding.

But it's so much more fun to use inaccurate words! Lets start with the GNU/Congress jokes now. They really aren't funny, but people will still say them.

Re:"Open source"

[axxackall]

Lets start with the GNU/Congress jokes now.

Better let's start the flame BSDL laws vs GPL laws. Oh, and how would LGPL make laws more reusable?

Re:"Open source"

[Anonymous Coward]

Give this comment above, why isn't this moderated as redundant?

Re:"Open source"

[EvilTwinSkippy]

As we all know, pro is the opposite of con.

Does that mean Congress is the opposite of Progress?

(Rimshot)

Where does a train stop? The train station.

Where does a bus stop? The bus terminal.

Does this mean the work stops at people's workstations and computer terminals?

"open source" laws

[Petrox]

it makes little sense to refer to any law as 'open source.' Laws aren't like open source computer code that can be tinkered with by anybody with the proper knowhow. Laws are altered by a constitutionally defined procedure by the various branches of our government.

A much better term would be that these laws enter the public domain.

Re:"open source" laws

[OECD]

Laws aren't like open source computer code that can be tinkered with by anybody with the proper knowhow.

Sure they are! "Anybody with the proper knowhow" is an activist judiciary. Read just about anything about the Supreme Court and you'll soon realize that they get to tinker a WHOLE lot.

Re:"open source" laws

[Petrox]

I read Supreme Court opinions for a living. The Court doesn't just have the right knowhow, but also a Constitutional mandate to do what they do: i.e, interpret the laws and constitution (see Article III of the U.S. Constitution and Marbury v. Madison if you're confused). There would be no law if there weren't courts and judges to "say what the law is." This is why 'open source law' makes no since, because the average joe doesn't have institutional legitimacy to be taken seriously when tinkering with legal code. Hackers have knowhow, but they lack this institutional mandate.

"Activist Judiciary" is a knee-jerk term for people who don't know what they're talking about. Usually, it's a term used by partisans when they disfavor what the Court is doing. Unless you can explain yourself further, your statement is without meaning.

Re:"open source" laws

[OECD]

"Activist Judiciary" is a knee-jerk term for people who don't know what they're talking about.

No, it's a term for judges who go beyond their mandate and "interpret" the law to reflect what they wish the law would say, rather than what it does. (Be careful when you accuse people of making statements without meaning!)

To bring this back on topic: the law can be "hacked" (its function can be changed), thus the term "open source law" makes sense. Calling the "Activist Judiciary" hackers is an imperfect analogy (they all are) because you need more than legal "knowhow", as you point out, to be able to hack away.

Perhaps it's better to consider the judiciary as part of the operating system, since they can't initiate anything themselves anyway. In that case, it would be the lawyers who are the hackers, trying to change the laws. The judiciary would be various networked computers that are more (activist) or less (constructionist) likely to corrupt the data (the laws).

Easier to read mirror:

[Gunsmithy]

http://regionalweb.texoma.net/cr/VEEKbrief.html This may be a bit easier to read...

GOOD!!!

[Crashmarik]

Imagine if it hadn't passed.

Ignorance would have to be an acceptable defence.

It would allow lawyers to rambus the legal system.

Seinfeld described lawyers as those annoying people that actually read the back of the box for the odd rules in the game. Imagine if they could now cut out parts of the rules and hide them.

Re:GOOD!!!

[SuperBanana]

Imagine if they could now cut out parts of the rules and hide them.

They don't have to hide them. They're effectively hidden already- there are so many laws, and they're so complex, written in such a confusing manner, etc- that the average citizen has no chance in HELL of even possibly knowing a fraction of a percent of them, much less understanding them.

Like the "open source" software arena, we need simplification and consolidation VERY, VERY badly.

Re:GOOD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Rght on brother! In addition to elimination of the government, we also need to eliminate the concept of "property" completely. Since the only way one person can lay claim to anything is though the threat of physical violence, the concept of private property is by definition theft.

Copyriting laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats insane! Thats like trying to copyrite a certain dance move or walk (wait... didn't someone do that?)

These people need to get their heads out of the Scrouge Mc. Duck moneybin and realise that these extreme copyriting tactics are totaly ludicrous. Honestly, I don't see why anyone would not have sex with Archie Bunker. I mean, come on. His dick is so supple it that I just can't help but fuck it with my cold, sweaty palms. It makes me feel like I'm working for the Vatican again! When it gets right down to it, props to all the slashdot trolls you're my homies my nizzles. Archie Bunker troll ownz you penisbird fewls! But like I was saying, this is total shit. Open source law all the way.

Re:ACMD eht setaloiv egassem siht gcidoceD

[FosterKanig]

This might be more effective if you spelt gnidoceD correctly. I will now wait by the door for the DMCA police.

Sympathize but...

[vanyel]

I sympathize with the standards organizations, but a free society cannot tolerate hidden laws. The standards organizations created the standards specifically to be placed into law, and that means full knowledge that it must be public. The people that care about the standards will still participate, as it's in their own interest to do so.

Re:Sympathize but...

[BigBadBri]

What about standards that are incorporated into laws?

In the case stated, it seems obvious that the organisation itself promoted the adoption of the standard into law, and was then surprised and upset by the result (loss of copyright).

But what about the situation where someone else promotes the adoption of a standard as law?

How would the state compensate the authors of the standard?

In the UK, we have the BSI, which is responsible for the authoring of standards in all sorts of areas, and then we have laws (such as the Building Regulations), which explicitly refer to those standards. The BSI sells the standards documents, and so far as I know it is still an infringement of the BSI's copyright to publish those standards in the public domain.

This has been an accepted fact in the UK for at least 25 years (as long as I have been working and aware of the legislation), and doesn't seem to arouse a great deal of passion.

I'm sure some smartarse will come up with the idea of using this legal argument in the UK, and publishing (and selling) the standards information in competition with the BSI.

This would only be fair if the publisher themselves had the overhead of generating the standards to begin with.

I'm ambivalent about this decision - yes, laws are public domain, but to deprive organisations that exist for the public good of income is surely bad.

Re:Sympathize but...

[vanyel]

In the US, there is a notion of "Emminent Domain", which is the procedure under which the state may take property (road right-of-way is a common use, though even under this procedure, the state has to pay "fair market value"). It would seem that would apply.

I would think the correct procedure would be to negotiate: "we'd like to make your standard law, will you permit?" They might agree for a fee, if not, or if the fee's unreasonable, then the legal body can do their own. Probably it would be cheaper to pay the organization quite a bit before doing their own, though it might be worthwhile if the organization is not being cooperative. I personally think valid uses of Emminent Domain are very few. But I would rather see the laws using the standards thrown out than have them remain inaccessible.

This is only recently an issue, because before the web, you would either visit a library, or you'd have to pay a publisher anyhow, but now with the web, it's an issue, as laws are one of the things that should be freely accessible by all.

Re:Sympathize but...

[bitmason]

One important distinction that was made in one of the legal statements was that these codes were written with the more or less express purpose of being incorporated into the law. The distinction is subtle, but important. I think most of us would agree that if Joe-Geek programmer were to write a book on a "Software Engineering Code of Ethics" and some legislature were to pass a law saying that the Code of Ethics in said book MUST be followed subject to fines of xxx... (basically incorp[orating the book by reference into the law) that should not suddenly place that book into the public domain.

The case here is a bit different. It's really more of an internet-driven change in business model where SOMEONE previously had to make printed copies of these codes and the organizations who created them maintained the right to do so (and profit by doing so) themselves. Now that distribution can be essentially free, it becomes an important disctinction whether it can be freely posted or not.

Re:Sympathize but...

[WCMI92]

"This would only be fair if the publisher themselves had the overhead of generating the standards to begin with.

I'm ambivalent about this decision - yes, laws are public domain, but to deprive organisations that exist for the public good of income is surely bad."

Please re-read what you wrote.

To allow LAWS to be kept private is tyrrany. How do you protest a law you feel is unjust if you can't re-publish it without the permission of the copyright holder?

And yes, this is possible in building codes... What if some corporate interest influences a local standards org that writes building codes to rubber stamp a RETROACTIVE change in home design that requires, for instance, handicap ramps, rails, etc to be installed in all _EXISTING_ homes before they could be sold?

Say that the interest is a company that sells the service of installing such retrofitting of such accomodations. And that they influenced people in that org with money.

Given that this is private business we are talking about, this would be completely LEGAL, as it's outside the laws governing POLITICAL campaigns and lobbying!

The people in the standards org duitfully pocket their dosh, put the requirements into their code, and the city council rubber stamp it.

Now, not only can opponents NOT have the right to KNOW what these new standards are, they can't republish them for the purposes of showing other citizens that they were ARBITRARILY done so as to require EVERY homeowner who wants to sell their home buy the services of the company that bought the change in the law to begin with, as they are so specific that only they are equipped to do it at that time.

And competitors have to pay to license the IP.

So does every homeowner, or else have their property rendered worthless.

Lemme guess.

[Anonymous Coward]

You use a Mac, don't you. I could tell by your pathetic, self righteous, holier than thou, attitude.

Re:Lemme guess.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean its contrast with the pathetic, self righteous, holier than thou attitude of Linux users, and the pathetic, self righteous, holier than thou attitude of Windows users?

Misuse of "Open Source"

[Dwonis]

s/open source/in the public domain/g

Re:Misuse of "Open Source"

[zulux]

s/open source/in the public domain/g

For you MSCEs out there

Menu Bar -> Edit -> Search & Replace -> Search For: Open Source -> Replace With: in the public domain -> "It looks like your Searching and Replacing" -> Right clicn, Hide Asistant -> Start from Begining on Document -> Ok -> Ok -> Ok -> Ok -> Ok -> Ok -> Ok

Re:Misuse of "Open Source"

[MyHair]

s/Menu Bar -> Edit -> Search & Replace/Control-H/

.
.
.

Oh shit...

Re:Misuse of "Open Source"

[zulux]

s/Menu Bar -> Edit -> Search & Replace/Control-H/


Uh oh - this could get ugly really quick ;)

Re:Misuse of "Open Source"

[Dwonis]

For the non-MCSEs like me, what does that do?

Re:Misuse of "Open Source"

[MyHair]

Is it that obvious I'm an MCSE? Oh the shame. MSCE's (the certification) suck so far, by the way. If I had to do it over again I'd take some credit courses or masturbate instead. Either is more beneficial and longer-lived than my MCSE.

To answer your question (I think), many Windows apps use Control-H as a shortcut for "Search & Replace", usually under Edit->Search & Replace. For most of the rest of the computing world, Control-H is backspace, but whatever.

The s/// command is of un*x origin, of course, and it was turning into a recursive joke until I made it not funny anymore.

Re:Misuse of "Open Source"

[Dwonis]

Heh. It's still funny. (But maybe that's just because I should be sleeping instead of reading Slashdot!) :-)

Here is the Whole text from Veeck's website

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Supreme Court of the United States
Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc, Petitioner
v.
Peter Veeck, D/B/A Regional Web

No. 02-355

Update June 3065, 2003

Summary

On June 27 the Supreme Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal of the Fifth Circuit court June 7, 2002 decision in Veeck vs. SBCCI No. 99-40632 that when a copyrighted standard or code is referenced into law (particularly if it thereby becomes "the law"), the developer cannot enforce its copyright against a free distribution of the standard

June 27, 2003 02-355 SOUTHERN BUILDING CODE V. VEECK, PETER

The motion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

This case is a matter of considerable concern to the Southern Building Code Congress International (SBBI) and to many other standards developers who depend upon the sales of their published and copyrighted standards to support their continued operation. On June 6 the Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc. (SBCCI) had filed a Supplemental Brief with the United States Supreme Court in response to a brief filed with the Supreme Court on May 30 by the Office of the Solicitor General.

The Solicitor General distills the essence of the dispute below:

Question Presented (to the Solicitor General) by the Supreme court on December 2, 2002 as discussed in the May 30 amicus :

This case concerns model codes written and copyrighted by a private organization. The codes apply to the construction, alteration, use, occupancy, and maintenance of buildings and the electrical, plumbing, mechanical and gas systems in them and provided criminal misdemeanor penalties for failure to comply. The private organization offers the codes to government entities for enactment into law. Two municipalities enacted ordinances that adopted the model codes by reference. The question presented is: Whether copyright law gives the private organization the right to restrict individuals from making copies of the material incorporated by reference in the municipal codes of the two municipalities.

Peter Veeck provides free access to information about the rural areas of Texas north of Dallas, including the codes and ordinances of the cities of the area, Veeck filed suit in federal district court in Sherman, Texas, against the Southern Building Code Congress International (SBCCI) for a declaration that the SBCCI standard codes which are adopted by reference by the cities in the Texoma area are in the public domain and not subject to the copyright claimed by SBCCI. He filed suit in Texas after being threatened with suit by SBCCI which is located in Alabama. Amicus Curae by SDOs

On May 30, 2003 the Solicitor General of the United States Department of Justice essentially concluded that copyright law does not give a private organization the right to restrict individuals from making copies of the material incorporated by reference in the municipal codes of the two municipalities. The Solicitor General stated, "This case involves a comprehensive code specifically created for enactment into law and designed broadly to regulate the primary conduce of private parties, The court of appeals' holding that such a code may be copied by interested members of the public is correct, it is consistent with the views of the only other court of appeals to address the same issue and it does not conflict with any decision of any other court of appeals. There is a broad range of differing governmental uses of a wide variety of different types of privately copyrighted materials, In a few cases, the courts of appeals have addressed the issues arising form such uses; they have divide between those involving the incorporation of copyrighted codes into laws that directly regulate primary conduct and those involving laws that reference copyrighted materials. In future cases, the courts of appeals can be expected to develop the relevant dif

lame text fixed here

[donutz]

whatever lameness they used to code that page has been eliminated here:

In the Supreme Court of the United States
Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc, Petitioner
v.
Peter Veeck, D/B/A Regional Web

No. 02-355

Update June 3065, 2003

Summary

On June 27 the Supreme Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal of the Fifth Circuit court June 7, 2002 decision in Veeck vs. SBCCI No. 99-40632 that when a copyrighted standard or code is referenced into law (particularly if it thereby becomes "the law"), the developer cannot enforce its copyright against a free distribution of the standard

June 27, 2003 02-355 SOUTHERN BUILDING CODE V. VEECK, PETER

The motion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

This case is a matter of considerable concern to the Southern Building Code Congress International (SBBI) and to many other standards developers who depend upon the sales of their published and copyrighted standards to support their continued operation. On June 6 the Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc. (SBCCI) had filed a Supplemental Brief with the United States Supreme Court in response to a brief filed with the Supreme Court on May 30 by the Office of the Solicitor General.

The Solicitor General distills the essence of the dispute below:

Question Presented (to the Solicitor General) by the Supreme court on December 2, 2002 as discussed in the May 30 amicus :

This case concerns model codes written and copyrighted by a private organization. The codes apply to the construction, alteration, use, occupancy, and maintenance of buildings and the electrical, plumbing, mechanical and gas systems in them and provided criminal misdemeanor penalties for failure to comply. The private organization offers the codes to government entities for enactment into law. Two municipalities enacted ordinances that adopted the model codes by reference. The question presented is: Whether copyright law gives the private organization the right to restrict individuals from making copies of the material incorporated by reference in the municipal codes of the two municipalities.

Peter Veeck provides free access to information about the rural areas of Texas north of Dallas, including the codes and ordinances of the cities of the area, Veeck filed suit in federal district court in Sherman, Texas, against the Southern Building Code Congress International (SBCCI) for a declaration that the SBCCI standard codes which are adopted by reference by the cities in the Texoma area are in the public domain and not subject to the copyright claimed by SBCCI. He filed suit in Texas after being threatened with suit by SBCCI which is located in Alabama. Amicus Curae by SDOs

On May 30, 2003 the Solicitor General of the United States Department of Justice essentially concluded that copyright law does not give a private organization the right to restrict individuals from making copies of the material incorporated by reference in the municipal codes of the two municipalities. The Solicitor General stated, "This case involves a comprehensive code specifically created for enactment into law and designed broadly to regulate the primary conduce of private parties, The court of appeals' holding that such a code may be copied by interested members of the public is correct, it is consistent with the views of the only other court of appeals to address the same issue and it does not conflict with any decision of any other court of appeals. There is a broad range of differing governmental uses of a wide variety of different types of privately copyrighted materials, In a few cases, the courts of appeals have addressed the issues arising form such uses; they have divide between those involving the incorporation of copyrighted codes into laws that directly regulate primary conduct and those involving laws that reference copyrighted materials. In

Re:I am a N00b

[Anonymous Coward]

A company wrote a suggested housing / zone code for small cities. They copyrighted it. Then some city passed it into law, and now the company wants you to pay them just to make a copy of the laws.

Judges whose business depends on lots of laws said no.

(+1 Sarcastic)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah...good to see the dark humor still lives.

Re:(+1 Sarcastic)

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a sec. That was sarcasm? Christ it sounded like a serious post by a fucker from free republic.

Quick!!!!

[malraid]

I must copyright and patent myself before they try to clone me!!!

Re:Quick!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no. Just before they clone you, start screaming what a loathsome, vile, lying, cheating, womanizing, loser you are. Then when the clone is made, he will start spouting the same comments. And then you can sue yourself for slander. :^)

BAD IDEA

[SHEENmaster]

Linux is copyrighted, the GPL makes specific exceptions under specific conditions. That is a good thing, because it protects the product.

If you did that, SCO could make OpenLinux as closed as OpenServer. We couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Referenced article

[Delirium Tremens]

All I can
say is that
the referenced
article is one
nice column.
That's for
sure.

Re:Referenced article

[Anonymous Coward]

> All I can
> say is that
> the referenced
> article is one
> nice column.
> That's for
> sure.

I laughed so hard my stomach started hurting...

Re:Referenced article

[leshert]

Works
fine
in
IE.

Still,
as
a
Mozilla
user,
I
was
disappoin ted.

Re:Referenced article

[IthnkImParanoid]

Their "about us" page seems to say they are an "consultancy" (is that a word) for international standards. Ironic, eh? Do like I did and email them to make fun of them.

Re:Referenced article

[Anonymous Coward]

I think "consultancy" is the next soveriegnty level after "empire", "kingdom", "principality", ... .

Re:Referenced article

[leshert]

Their "about us" page seems to say they are an "consultancy" (is that a word) for international standards. Ironic, eh?

Indeed, although I would guess that "international standards" doesn't mean "all international standards"; I'd doubt they would step in if someone started hawking a dodgy TCP stack.

(Also, 'consultancy' is a word; it means pretty much what you'd expect it to mean: a business that either acts as a consultant or is set up to employ consultants to businesses. I've generally heard it more from Commonwealth-types than from Yanks, but it's real.)

Do like I did and email them to make fun of them.

One step ahead of you, hoss. :-)

the same thing that's wrong

[SweetAndSourJesus]

with using h1 for formatting. That's not what it's for.

Tables are for tabular data.

Public Domain != Open Source

[John Harrison]

If it were, RMS could insist that we call the Constitution the GNU/Constitution instead.

It seems odd that /.ers get so mad about intellectual property law and then abuse terms relating to it so badly. At least rant intelligently!

If a law was copyrighted...

[Erick the Red]

then I'd have to pay someone to read it. I know ignorence isn't that great of a defence in court, but it shouldn't be the public's responsibility to go out of its way to find out what's right and wrong.

Re:If a law was copyrighted...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. Then you agree with the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. And this is "Insightful" because...?

Hypocracy?

[argoff]

They can see how copyright laws screw up the ability to run the legal system. It's such an unreasonable restriction, they won't even tolerate it. So how can they tolerate the RIAA, the DMCA, the MPAA, and copyright restrictions in general without being hypocrites.

You can't copy right fact

[ad0gg]

Plain and simple you can't copyright fact and a law is fact. Hence "fact of law".

Re:You can't copy right fact

[airrage]

Yes, but you can still keep the nuisance factor high. Most likely, one is going to have to go down to the courthouse and to peruse the available building codes or whatever. However, to actually have a copy you'll have to buy it from someone.

* The US government makes a nice little living selling periodicals and Government documents (government document offices are neat little places). Shouldn't the US Geological Survey of Western States for Blue Topaz be available free? It was our tax money?

* The standards for putting up signs in and around your town cost you money to see.

* The federal register is a subscription service.

So I worry about this life-by-nuisance we are entering where we pay to get into the game, we pay for the seat, we pay for each pitch, we pay to see the ending, we pay to exit.

Just me but kinda sucks.

Re:You can't copy right fact

[Xeger]

'Round our pale yellow sun,
Orbit nine heavenly bodies
And each
Reflects the morning light differently
Across its day side

There...I've just come up with some incredibly crappy free-verse poetry that also happens to be factual in nature. Furthermore, I claim copyright on the poetry. Does this mean I've also laid copyright to the fact? Bollocks! Of course not. As you pointed out, it's impossible to copyright fact.

The statement of fact, on the other hand, can be copyrighted. I can copyright the poem as a whole without copyrighting the ideas evoked by the poem. Similarly, the issue at hand was: can a particular wording of the law be claimed as intellectual property? And the Supreme Court's answer was no. The text of a model law, once it has been adopted and recorded into the lawbooks, enters the public domain.

Re:You can't copy right fact

[egburr]

From the Federal Register's web site http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.html

Published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Federal Register is the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents. It is updated daily by 6 a.m. and is published Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. GPO Access contains Federal Register volumes from 59 (1994) to the present.

Documents are available in Summary, PDF, ASCII text, or HTML format. HTML documents are available from 2000 forward and provide hypertext links to Web sites mentioned in the FR document. The active HTTP-link feature will be added to previous

Federal Register databases in the near future. The HTML documents can be saved as text files with no loss or change in data.

There you can search or browse through all editions of the Federal Register from 1994 to now. You can also:

• Sign up to freely receive the daily Federal Register Table of Contents via e-mail.
• Find, review, and submit comments on Federal rules that are open for comment and published in the Federal Register using Regulations.gov.
• Purchase a subscription to the printed edition of the Federal Register.
• Find issues of the Federal Register (including issues prior to 1994) at a local Federal depository library.

Access to the information is free. If you want an official hardcopy version, you have to pay for it.

Re:You can't copy right fact

[Anonymous Coward]

Similarly, the issue at hand was: can a particular wording of the law be claimed as intellectual property?

But the law is different from poetry, because the exact wording of the law is absolutely essential to the facts. If you change the wording, you've changed the law.

Re:You can't copy right fact

[Ptahian]

You do NOT have to pay for a printed copy. You are FREE to pay for a printed copy BUT... you are also free to commision a hand scribed version direct from your local monastary.

If I print it out the Federal Registry, *I* can sell it to you. It's public domain. I can undercut prices from the government, I can make rude ascii pr0n out of it in a bit of useless satire, etc.

-ptah

Properly quoted but still mis-understood?

[ClarkEvans]

Jefferson believed that if there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. Writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artitsts would not create art.

Many founding fathers may have thought this, but definately not Jefferson. What suprises me is that you can get this so very wrong, even with Jefferson's own words below quoted oh so plainly.

http://regionalweb.texoma.net/cr/VEEKbrief.html

[tkrotchko]

http://regionalweb.texoma.net/cr/VEEKbrief.html#Ot her

Taken from Ohio's Amicus briefs (I hope I have that right).

What is wrong with tables for formatting

[Anonymous Coward]

is that it royally fucks up the rendering by Jaws, for example -- because it was marked as tabular data, so it gets read as tabular data, which sounds stupid, because it isn't tabular -- so the problem is that it was marked as something terribly in appropriate -- therefore, the markup is the problem.

Section 105 of the 1976 Copyright acts covers this

[kaltkalt]

105. Subject matter of copyright:
United States Government Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise. If public interest groups draft model laws that they want enacted, they should be prepared to lose any copyright in those model laws if, in fact, they get adopted. What the hell would they want to keep the copyright for, anyway? Other than cock-strocking.

I suppose, however, that applies only to US government works and not US State Government works. Just another reason why we don't need states, and they sure as hell shouldn't have any rights. When has "state's rights" ever been used as an argument for anything worthy and moral?

That is completely incorrect.

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary purpose of copyright law in an information economy is to control the lives of individual members collectively known as the so-called "Public." Please follow the money, anything else is rhetoric, philosophical crap and wishful thinking, none of which contain any calories or can be redeemed for same.

HTH.

moderators: -5 stupil

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is just dumb. The poster attributes a position to Jefferson that he not only didn't believe in, but explicitly rejected in all of his writings. Then he quotes Jefferson for credibility. Amazing... what is even more amazing is the moderators who think that this is somehow "insightful".

Open Source laws are better.

[raehl]

Open Source laws would require that the human-readable source english be freely distributed with the lawyernary files executed by the court.

Restriction

[hackwrench]

The problem is, without copyright, individuals and organizations would be able to restrict distribution of derivitive works.

Re:Here's another interesting quote

[Frymaster]

""Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both."
- James Madison (Fourth President of the United States)

while making sure laws remain open is a good and necessary thing to maintain a transparent state with de jure authority, it only goes so far. if the laws are open but the interests, motivations and business dealings of lawmakers remain opaque then the openess is not complete.

mit (yep, the massachussets institute of technology) has been running a site for a while now dedicated to allowing citizens to monitor and research their legislators (and executives). the mission statement says it all:

To empower citizens by providing a single, comprehensive, easy-to-use repository of information on individuals, organizations, and corporations related to the government of the United States of America.

To allow citizens to submit intelligence about government-related issues, while maintaining their anonymity. To allow members of the government a chance to participate in the process.

the full site is at: http://opengov.media.mit.edu/

it's a good read.

My email to them:

[IthnkImParanoid]

Good afternoon,
I am writing to inform you the web page listed in the subject line is completely illegible unless using Internet Explorer, as the text of the page is confined to a narrow column only a few words wide, with wide blank spaces on either side. A quick look at the source for the page reveals that the text has on both sides columns where the width is set to 720 pixels. As a programmer and web developer, I understand the difficulty in developing web pages for more than one browser, but your home pages contains the following description of your organization:

GTW Associates is an International standards and trade policy consultancy with expertise in the strategic role of standards in competitiveness of businesses, organizations and countries in the global marketplace.

Although I did not find specific references to W3, HTML 4.0, or other technical standards and specifications on the site, the lack of compliance with other web-browsers seems to undercut your qualifications. (As a side note, the page was apparently updated last on "June 3065.") I would very much like to be able to read your site with Opera or Mozilla.

Thank you for your time,

Formatting

[BigBadBri]

What the hell would they want to keep the copyright for, anyway? Other than cock-strocking.

I can't believe that this is actually in the act.

Unless Billy Clinton put it in by presidential decree, that is.

Perhaps you missed a paragraph break between the act and your comment?

Re:Formatting

[kaltkalt]

indeed, i hit return a few times but forgot to put the html break in there. oops.

Here is a summary...

[spiritraveller]

There is this standards setting organization, probably made up of member companies in an industry.

The standards setting organization is in the business of creating "model" codes. This is common. A better known example would be the Model Penal Code which is a set of proposed criminal laws created by the American Law Institute... in this case, the group was creating model codes for buildings (plumbing, electric, etc.) to be enacted by cities.

So, you have an organization that creates this work with the intention of it being incorporated into the law. However, they get some revenue by selling copies of the code to interested parties (probably people in the building industry, architects, developers, students). So they assert a copyright in the code that they wrote.

Meanwhile, you have this guy in Texas who is giving people access to the municipal laws in his region. The municipal laws do not actually copy the organization's code, but they incorporate it by reference....

IOW, you need access to the organization's work in order to know what the law is! So the guy gives people access to the code free of charge, and the organization threatens to sue him.

The 5th Circuit said that laws are in the public domain. This also applies to rules that are incorporated by reference into a statute even if the text of the rule is not copied into the statute.

Simply put, people have a right to know what the law is.

How many more times must we hear this stupid meme?

[abe ferlman]

Slashbots are always quick to condemm copyright law and seldom realize that it is because of copyright law that things like Linux and BSD are able to be what they are.

This statement is highly misleading. It's like saying if it weren't for tyrants we wouldn't have revolutions. Well, f'ing duh! If we didn't have tyrants revolutions wouldn't be necessary!

Copyright law is used by the GPL to protect itself from... drumroll please... copyright law. The parent poster fails to understand this recursive nature of this defense mechanism.

Copyright Please Read

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright is automatic you write something it has Copyright even this what I am typing has Copyright. The question for the Copyright holder is will I or will I not protect it. As a Copyright holder I have the right to say that you can use it how you wish.

Now Copyright does Not mean that all stuff you have the right to charge money on. Once decared public domain all right to charge money for it are gone. As in this case they said that laws once passed were public domain. This mean If I think up a good law and someone wants to pass it for the first time at least they have to give me credit unless I tell them that they can take the credit.

Now if it might be required to buy me out or hire me or do something to get the law. What do you think some of the public servents get payed to do.

Basicly Copyright does go on. Now a goverment might try to place a law with a read fee but this is not good as if this is required the best you could get in court
judge: did you know about xyz law.
defendat: No I could not afford to pay the fee to find out about it.
judge: You are Free to go.

Now the reason why is simple you can not be charged for doing something wrong if they was not a fair chance to find out about it. And the judge could not tell you the law with out paying the fee if the judge to tell you the law there is a fair chance that you would just get of with a warning and get to know the law for free anyhow.

Now lets get to the tricky bit there is no reson why laws could not be a licence simlar to gpl not this would have to be stated when the law is passed. That another ruling body (goverments) who wanted to use the law would have to buy it. But every one else could read it for free and use it for free so no Judge problem.

Now there is no reason why the law could not be rewrite by working backward how the law effected people and writing a new law that did the same thing just a different way. Basicly copyright is extramelly weak. And normally from a developers point of view can not afford code around.

Abusive use of open source on law

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a compiled law? binary law? if law can not be patented or copyright, it does not mean it has its source and the source is opened.

Re:How many more times must we hear this stupid me

[ender81b]

What you fail to grasp, apparently, is what would happen if there was no copy right law.

You see then you would have no GPL. Without a GPL company X would take source code and then insert it into product Y without giving credit, paying money, or re-releasing the source code. Which would violate the GPL and turn all open source products into, effectively, BSD licenses.

Yep. I sure don't get it.

Monopoly of idea as a "Natural" right

[Charles Dodgeson]

When Thomas Jefferson put the idea of intellectual property into the Constitution of the United States,

Maybe Hamilton, maybe Madison; but Jefferson was not party to the constitutional convention.

And considering that (as you correctly quote) he was of the "information wants to free" crowd, it makes it even less likely that he wrote the copyright and patent clause, although what you quote was written 26 years after the US constitution and may reflect a change of heart.

Quoting more from the same document, his ambivalance becomes clearer.

Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.

If you read the whole of the document, it is clear that what Jefferson is arguing is that a monopoly on an idea isn't a natural right, but one legal one that may (or may not) be granted by the state.

www.fsf.org

[sleepingsquirrel]

You might want to check out the Free Software Foundation

Just like BSD, except...

[sleepingsquirrel]

Without copyright you could copy, redistribute, disassemble, reverse-engineer, fold, spindle, and mutilate the binaries.

Re:Just like BSD, except...

[tc]

Yes, you could do all those things. But, of course, you'd have to in order to get at the source code.

If someone made some cool kernel mods that they shipped in their embedded device, they would not be under any obligation to release the source to those mods were it not for the GPL. Without copyright law, no GPL, and without GPL you'd have to go to all that reverse engineering effort if you wanted to know how it worked.

In effect, it would turn the GPL into more like the BSD license. The two are very clearly not equivalent. (Want to know what changes MS made to the BSD TCP/IP stack? Tough, they don't have to tell you.)

Re:Just like BSD, except...

[abe ferlman]

I admit this is the first time I've heard this argument, and I'm tempted by it.

However, reverse engineering is difficult and expensive because of the strictures of copyright law. Clean room processes and documentation would no longer be necessary.

However, an arms race would probably develop between software companies wanting to keep their modifications of GPL software secret and developers of disassembler/debugger software. This is a problem, albeit much less of a problem than the fear of felony prosecution we have today.

You're basically right, we couldn't twist anyone's arm to give us source without the GPL. But there are two problems with this:

1. If a firm can obfuscate the code sufficiently that you can't reverse engineer it, there's nothing to stop them from obfuscating it so you can't tell it uses GPL software anyway, so there's no way to enforce the GPL anyway.

2. The need for the GPL stems from the ability of people to "own" certain programs. Once copyright vanishes, the need for this defensive mechanism largely disappears- we can roll our own solutions without fear of prosecution; we can probably do so without even having access to the source if we are allowed to hack the binary files.

Finally, if we in fact were in a world where we would consider abolishing copyright law, we might pass a law that requires source code to software to be published without using copyright law to enforce it. That is, the GPL uses copyright law to enforce its requirement that source be distributed, but there's no reason that needs to be so.

You've given me something to think about, but I'm still not convinced. I think you're splitting hairs.

Re:The GPL should be outlawed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source, indeed.

Re:Section 105 of the 1976 Copyright acts covers t

[Anonymous Coward]

105. Subject matter of copyright: [...] What the hell would they want to keep the copyright for, anyway? Other than cock-strocking.

I bet Thomas Jefferson put that line in there, he was always dizzin Washington's biznit.

Re:Section 105 of the 1976 Copyright acts covers t

[Anonymous Coward]

When has "state's rights" ever been used as an argument for anything worthy and moral?

One might say that prior to the Civil War, those northern states used their states rights to outlaw slavory within their territory, as it was permitted at the federal level.

-1 Misinformative

[Anonymous Coward]

The quote you used is in direct contrast to your statment. The quote says that people naturally want to and will share ideas. He claims this is good. His final sentence states plainly that he believes invention can not be owned.

The law isn't secret. It's just complicated.

[ArsSineArtificio]

the average citizen has no chance in HELL of even possibly knowing a fraction of a percent of them, much less understanding them

Fortunately, the average citizen has no chance in HELL of ever needing to know most of them. Quick! What's the statutory quorum for a meeting of your local water board? How many days before trial can you file a motion for summary judgment in your state? How many parts per million of formaldehyde can you have in crazy glue? Answer: who cares? If for some reason it matters to you, you can go and seek *that particular fact* out. Or hire a professional to find it out for you. But the average reader sitting in his chair reading Slashdot is not going to go to jail over his ignorance of these matters.

The laws that *matter* on a day to day basis are the ordinary criminal laws - and you already know those. Don't run anybody over. Don't shoplift. Don't steal money that somebody asked you to look after.

The law isn't secret. It's just complicated. It's complicated because the scope of human interactions is complicated. Some people buy houses from each other. Some people sail ships in waters that don't belong to any country. Some people steal things in complicated ways. Some people die and ask for unusual things to be done with their property afterwards.

The legislature's job is to make laws as clearly as possible to help keep all this running smoothly. The lobbyist's job is to suggest legislation, or keep an eye on others peoples' suggestions, in hopes that laws favorable to them will be created. (And legislators listen to them because it's hard to be an expert in both, say, environmental water quality regulation and securities oversight. Lobbyists have sway not merely because they have money, but because they have expertise which they can share with legislators. Wise legislators, of course, listen to both sides.) The judge's job is to interpret the legislature's laws, as well as the traditions passed down from earlier judges. The appellate judge's job is to create law in the cracks where the legislature hasn't, like putty joining everything together. The lawyer's job is to make sense of all this and act as an interface between the system and an individual person.

None of this is mysterious. And none of it is a conspiracy against you. Nobody likes having complicated laws. It's a pain in the ass for judges, and for lawyers, and for ordinary citizens. Want to know why so many corporations are based in Delaware? It's because they have really good corporate laws that are straightforward and easy to understand. Makes it a good place to set up shop.

ASA

Why?

[!3ren]

What I want to know is why someone would want to copyright a law.
I can't see any method of generating income or royalty unless say the laws had to be licensed per year or something.
Also, if a copyright was held on a law, would this allow the copyright holders to upgrade the law without the knowledge of the client? (DMCA v1.0 has been upgraded to DMCA v1.1, all cd's must be bought again to ensure validity)
Just wondering...

New use for laws

[dagarath]

So the government can remove your copyright to your work by incorporating it into a law.

How about a law that specifies the use of MS Windows / Word for document submission of something (like title transfers or something) Since it's a required part of a law, does MS loses it's copyright to Windows and Word?

Government should bear the cost

[Hamster Lover]

Laws are enacted for the benefit of the public. One of the bedrocks of jurisprudence is that the law must be publicly known for it to have any benefit at all, otherwise ignorance would be used as a defence. Righly so, to ask the public to remit a fee to obtain a copy of the laws that we are to keep completely undermines this principle.

Yes, there is a cost in establishing certain standards. If you wish these standards to become law, you either must be willing to bear the cost or work with the government to fund the cost.

It completely baffles me that anyone would submit an idea to government for inclusion as a law and expect to retain ownership of that idea. Ubsurd.

True Open Law

[The Monster]

But nobody really noticed until we came to expect instant internet access to government information, since all local governments have copies of the copyrighted building codes available for inspection in the office.

Long before I heard of the Internet, I thought this was suspect. I don't know how it is in other states, but in KS the only reason a lot of county newspapers stay in business is because of a state law that requires publication of certain legal documents, including every new local ordinance, in the 'official county newspaper'.

When dealing with such a complex subject as building codes, having the county/city buy a few copies for the courthouse/city hall and a few more for each library, and 'incorporating by reference' made some kind of sense. But now we have the technology to communicate law for virtually zero transaction cost, so I propose this simple idea for governments to consider enacting if they want to open up the whole business of law to make it accessible to the citizenry:

Every proposed law (bill/resolution/etc), when first introduced by a member of the legislative body, must be submitted in a well-defined markup language - I'm thinking XHTML - to show the exact text of the proposal and track any amendments as they are attached using span classes that show every jot and tittle that's altered, when, by what vote... When the law is passed, the document is cryptographically signed by the presiding officer of the legislative body - when the executive has the power to approve or veto with a pen and ink, he also applies an electronic signature to the bill

And the entire base of existing law must be transcribed into such a format within 5 years. Then do the same with administrative regulations promugated by agencies, with hyperlinks back to the law that gave them the power to promulgate. And all the judicial decisions. . .

Making the law open to the people electronically will be far cheaper and effective than doing it by just printing fat books that sit in law libraries.

Re:True Open Law

[Rares Marian]

The RIAA is afraid we'll spider the site for new additions to the books eliminating the element of surprise.

Re:True Open Law

[smagruder]

Bravo! [serious]

On top of what you propose, there should also be a way for citizens to comment on law as it develops, using an online markup system and comment area. See the "Asynchronous Collaborative Structured Document Building & Review" links under Real-world Applications at http://www.democracy2.org/?section=library&tab=enh ancing for possible tools (albeit with some enhancements) that could be utilized.

Re:True Open Law

[Buzz_Litebeer]

You know I am a real cynic a lot of times, and I simply think new fangled things such as what you propose are kinda retarded... But not this time, that really is a good Idea, I am all for making laws... real.. tangible, and accessible. I did not realize building codes were already treated thus. If someone wants to create teh building codes, and be suplemented them, then let the government supplement them for the research, not the actual sale of the material.

It can be given at zero cost, so let it be given at zero cost other than the taxes to maintain and aquire it.

Re:True Open Law

[stephanruby]

Turn this into "publish every law on the web" and you will get politicians on board.

Re:True Open Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn this into "publish every law on the web" and you will get politicians on board.

Yeah. A nice soundbite that they can wrap their brains around, or at least they figure their constituents will understand in the 10 seconds before the next Shiny Thing appears on the TeeVee.

Quick!

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone get DECSS into a law, stat!

Mod Parent Down: Stock Troll

[ewhac]

The parent post is a stock troll, originally appearing on Kuro5hin, and gets slipped in here from time to time. It is a willful misrepresentation of Jefferson's views.

Schwab

Anybody can tinker, but try getting 'em ADOPTED

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Laws aren't like open source computer code that can be tinkered with by anybody with the proper knowhow.

But they CAN be! ANYBODY can tinker with them. Use the courts for a debugger. Petition an administrative body. Submit samples to a legislator (with or without wining-and-dining him). Write an initiative.

Laws are altered by a constitutionally defined procedure by the various branches of our government.

Precicely.

Anybody can WRITE them. Getting them ADOPTED is a whole 'nother story.

Re:Copyright Please Read

[d3faultus3r]

Copyright is not automatic. One must actually bother to make the effort of providing notices that this work is your intellectual property. Until then the work is considered in the public domain. In the majority of situations involving copyrighted works being included in laws, you are able to provide that information as a public service so long as you mention who the owner of the work being included is.

Re:Section 105 of the 1976 Copyright acts covers t

[rmohr02]

When has "state's rights" ever been used as an argument for anything worthy and moral?

That's kind of funny. I'm going to assume you haven't had a government class yet. Here's a rough list:

• antebellum northern states outlawing slavery
• California allowing medical marijuana (ok, maybe this is questionable)
• Michigan requiring driver's ed before a minor can get a license (as far as I know, this applies to all to every state, but Michigan was the first)
• New York requiring seatbelts to be worn in cars (applies to every state but NH, but NY was the first)

There's thousands more reasons, but I don't feel like looking them up for some idiot.

Re:Copyright Please Read

[Anonymous Coward]

That hasn't been true since the Berne convention was adopted. Works are now copyrighted from the moment they're fixed in a tangible form (though registration is necessary once you want to sue for recent infringement). An effective notice eliminates innocent infringement as a defense, but has no other effect.

The parent poster = retard; point by point below

[guacamolefoo]

When Thomas Jefferson put the idea of intellectual property into the Constitution of the United States

Hmmm...unless TJ had access to email, he would have had a difficult time participating in the Constitutional Convention. He was in Europe at the time, not Phil(th)adelphia. See here for TJ's bio. The CC was convened in May of 1787 and the list of delegates shows that TJ was not one of them.

once people learn something, they can reuse that knowledge

I suggest that you reuse the knowledge that I have imparted to you.

Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

and

Congress shall have the power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

The former you attribute, correctly, to TJ (from a letter dated 8/13/1813 to one Isaac McPherson). The second attribution, from the United States Constitution, which, as pointed out above, Jefferson had nothing to do with writing, seems, shall we say, a little contradictory. (sorry about all the commas -- surely none were necessary) Have you even read what you posted?

We need to remind people that copyright, like most laws in the US, is a balance between two forces, and the scale should not be tipped too far to one side.

Your coup de grace suggests that the two passages you quote are capable of reconciliation. That is somewhat akin to saying "Fish need bicycles" and "Fish don't need bicycles" are capable of reconciliation. While the point is perhaps reasonable, the way you attempted to make it was a giant mogolian clusterfuck.

In short, user956, despite the attribution of "Insightful" comments to you by Slashtard moderators, you qualify for the "Fucktard Asshat Award" for July 8, 2003. Congratulations.

Mark this as "Flamebait" if you will. I have karma to burn.

GF.

Re:Section 105 of the 1976 Copyright acts covers t

[kaltkalt]

The northern states outlawed slavery because of industrial revolution. Slaves were no longer an absolute necessity and they all felt they'd be better off getting rid of all the black people up there. Then, and only then, did the moral crusades start. They didn't want black people living 'down there' in the south, either. It was understood that they'd all be sent back to Africa. Liberia has been in the news lately... ever read about how it was founded?

Just because a state passes a trivial law that other states end up copying (i.e. seatbelt laws) has absolutely nothing to do with state's rights. About the only laws states can pass are seatbelt laws, helmet laws, and smoking ordinances. Everything else is preempted by federal law. And as for the first two, the states will lose highway funding if they don't comply. So, that means the only law a state can pass is one which tells people where they can't smoke cigarettes. That, of course, makes the 10th Amendment a waste of ink, IMHO.

Complexity of the law

[guacamolefoo]

I think you make some excellent points. IAAL, and I find that areas I do not have familiarity with are incomprehensible at first. When I start to dig into them, there is usually a fair amount of good sense behind them. There are, of course, exceptions, but these are generally far and few between.

Trial procedures in my state, for instance, are governed by the state Rules of Civil Procedure with some local rules in effect county by county. They seem like water to a fish to me now -- I barely notice them. Before, I was drowning in them.

I suspect that programmers find new languages to be similar -- there are some familiar general principles, but certain ways of doing things seem alien at first. After some experience is gained with them, the libraries and syntax seem to make much more sense.

Similarly, you tend to learn languages that you need to know (or, in the context of networking, you learn about the platforms you need to use/support).

Sometimes it sounds to me as though people who whine about the complexity of the law are making criticisms that are just as legitimate as those made by a lawyer would make if he complained to a group of programmers about how GCC sucks and is hard to use as compared to other compilers. Admittedly, everyone is affected by the law (in different ways), but I think it is extremely unrealistic to expect that it is possible in the complex society in which we live for "the law" to be familiar and accessible to everyone.

We don't expect complex applications or medical technology to be understandable by everyone, and I think it is silly to expect that things as disparate as tax law, securities regulation, civil procedure, and insurance law to be reduced to such simple terms that the average person who reads nothing more challenging that Time can put his arms around everything encompassed by the statutory and regulatory laws we live under.

GF.

Re:first!

[I Like Swords!!!]

Nah, probably had piss poor aim... completely falling short of those other comments.

Next issue

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens if somebody copywrites a text which can be used as law - can he prevent this law because he does not offer it for law ?

A Big Victory for Democracy!!!

[smagruder]

The Fifth Circuit further observed that laws are not subject to federal copyright law, and "public ownership of the law means that 'the law' is in the 'public domain' for whatever use the citizens choose to make of it."

I haven't felt this good to be an American in many years. You go Veeck! SBCCI can go to hell with their unAmerican attack on democracy and the peoples' right to easily access their own laws!

What they're really afraid of

[Anonymous Coward]

... is that the copyright would interfere with the public's access to the law's text -- that might arguably be a violation of Due Process (14th Amendment to the US Constitution Due Process, that is) and force the court to invalidate the entire law. Makes you wonder about those volumes of municipal codes that are locked up away from view as a result of various copyright interests (because they incorporate standards or are published by legal publishing houses that demand their pound of flesh from anyone who wants to see them). Same problem exists with "Notice by Publication" which is how most local laws fulfill their public notice requirment. Problem is, the Notice is stuffed away in the archives of a local paper that won't let you see them without paying a fee. But who said Knowledge and Liberty were free?

Et tu IEEE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Filed brief supporting the petitioner: INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS
(i.e. The IEEE supports copyrighted laws)

Support the ACM - they have better policies!

There's big money involved here...

[cwsulliv]

when all the copyrighted materials incorporated by reference into federal, state, and local laws are considered.
Look for a major lobbying effort to persuade Congress to nullify this court decision by appropriate legislation.
Hmmm... think "secret laws".

Your right to zealotry stops at the facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't call it 'Open Source' when it is really Public Domain.

What's the motivation?

[macwhiz]

What's the motivation for a third party to write a model building code and get it enacted as a law?

Is it an altruistic urge to ensure the safety of the general public?

I submit that, if such an urge were the chief reason for writing a model building code, groups like SBCCI wouldn't care if people copied the code. After all, if you keep people from easily getting the code -- which is supposed to keep people safe -- you're encouraging people to be less safe. No code, no idea if you're doing it right.

What other motivation could there be?

By trying to assert copyright on the enacted model laws, groups like SBCCI show that money is a major motivation. As long as the drafting group holds a legally-recognized copyright, they can soak the populace for any amount they wish. People need access to these codes, whether it's a contractor building a skyscraper or a homeowner building a deck. If the only source for the text of the code is the drafting group, it's a huge opportunity for profit.

If you agree with my opinion that money, not safety, seems to be the biggest motivation for the drafters of model codes, consider this: The codes are frequently updated. When the code is updated, those who needed it must have purchased it again. I think that perhaps this might have lead to code revisions that weren't strictly necessary for safety, but rather, revisions that ensured everyone would need to buy a new copy of the code.

Kind of like how a lot of software upgrades work. Remember the days when word processors changed file formats with every major revision?

I hope this court decision will ensure that building codes are about safety, and not profit. Those who draft the code need to be concerned about safety first and foremost, not about the money to be made in publication.

The parent poster = retard; point by point below

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT.

YHL.

HAND.

Open Source = GOOD, GPL = COMMUNISM

[Anonymous Coward]

Public Domain and BSD for the greater good of the country is Good Stuff. GPL and all other "licenses" that impose downline/pyramid scheme BS on people attempting to contribute to society is COMMUNISM.

Re:The law isn't secret. It's just complicated.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why we need more programmers as lawmakers!

Re:Section 105 of the 1976 Copyright acts covers t

[rmohr02]

Then what about states working against the PATRIOT Act? I can't see anything wrong with that--in fact, that is a case in which the federal government needs to be checked on.

Non-visual user agents

[yerricde]

But using tables for formatting is perfectly acceptable, as it consistently and clearly works, has always worked ... Get over it, it works.

Does table-based visual formatting work with non-visual display methods such as a voice interface? Does it work well on a handheld device with a 240x160 pixel screen?

Re:Non-visual user agents

[dekashizl]

Does table-based visual formatting work with non-visual display methods such as a voice interface? Does it work well on a handheld device with a 240x160 pixel screen?

No, it doesn't work well with either of those. So? I've spent several years working on cross-device content presentation (WAP, voice, web, mini-web, etc.), and one thing I can say for certain is that web pages work on web browsers.

If you want content on other devices, you need to re-render it as something else specific for that target, just like people use JavaScript now to render for IE/Netscape separately. There's no magic solution that will look/sound great on every device and platform. If you try it, you will be reduced to ugly, user-unfriendly, lowest common denominator presentation and stuck with HUGE bloated code anyway.

A good solution is to represent data in XML and use XSLT or similar technology to render specifically for your target platform. Note that many browsers even have this functionality (XSLT) built in.

Re:Non-visual user agents

[yerricde]

web pages work on web browsers.

I define a "web browser" as a program that can download pages via HTTP and render HTML into something human-perceivable. Not all web browsers are visual web browsers. Or am I degrading this discussion into a question of semantics?

If you want content on other devices, you need to re-render it as something else specific for that target

CSS supports @media selectors to do just that. You can get different selectors for a text browser ('tty'), a WebTV style device ('tv' and 'projection'), IE/Mozilla ('screen' and 'print'), a speech browser ('aural'), a Braille browser ('braille' and 'embossed'), a PDA ('handheld'), etc.

A good solution is to represent data in XML and use XSLT or similar technology to render specifically for your target platform. Note that many browsers even have this functionality (XSLT) built in.

You sing the praises of table layout, but most web browsers that support XSLT also support CSS. Would you really want to generate a table layout using client-side XSLT? And how through HTTP would your server know which server-side XSLT script to use?

Re:Non-visual user agents

[dekashizl]

I define a "web browser" as a program that can download pages via HTTP and render HTML into something human-perceivable. Not all web browsers are visual web browsers. Or am I degrading this discussion into a question of semantics?

You are, but I was not clear, and when I said that I meant "standard desktop web browsers".

CSS supports @media selectors ...

The CSS approach is inherently flawed in that it adds markup to a fixed flow, when in reality I want different flow on different devices. Sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, sometimes repeating a header every paragraph, sometimes not, sometimes with links, sometimes not... It's a fine abstract solution that probably has some good specific applications, but it doesn't properly address the problem of vastly different device types and the fact that information/content is presented in vastly different ways on them.

You sing the praises of table layout, but most web browsers that support XSLT also support CSS. Would you really want to generate a table layout using client-side XSLT?

Sure, why not? If I'm rendering HTML for a standard desktop web browser, what's the difference? It's two alternate ways to accomplish the same thing. Neither is right or wrong.

And how through HTTP would your server know which server-side XSLT script to use?

A simple answer is to switch on information in the User-Agent HTTP header. You can certainly get more clever than that, but it's usually not necessary.

By the way, don't get me wrong. I think the CSS approach to multi-platform rendering is cool, and is often easy to implement to get initial support going for multiple platforms. But for long-term production quality cross-platform presentation, it's not sufficient.

Delaware?

[stomv]

So... you don't think the facts that the Delaware courts have historically been friendly to corporations when making decisions or the fact that delaware has no corporate income tax have anything to do with it?

It is true that the Delaware laws are straightforward -- because they offer very few restrictions. Delaware's corporation laws are slim; there just aren't many of them... including an entire section missing (the tax code).

The fact is that Delaware is a corporation haven because they have few regulations, and no taxation on corporations... merely claiming that it's because they have really good corporate laws that are straightforward and easy to understand doesn't quite embrace all of the facts.

Re:Delaware?

[ArsSineArtificio]

The fact is that Delaware is a corporation haven because they have few regulations, and no taxation on corporations... merely claiming that it's because they have really good corporate laws that are straightforward and easy to understand doesn't quite embrace all of the facts.

That's certainly true. But Delaware also has a very well-developed body of caselaw, and experienced judges, to deal with situations like mergers and acquisitions, proxy fights, shareholder lawsuits, directors' liability, and so on. If one of these legal situations arises for a corporation based in Delaware (and they often do), everybody involved has the ability to predict fairly well how it will come out, because the law is clear and straightforward. That certainty is extremely valuable, because it makes for much better decision-making. It's like choosing between the Next Great Thing programming language, with poor documentation and no sample code, and the tried and true previous-generation language, with eight O'Reillys and four dozen webboards devoted to it.

The tax freedoms are helpful, but it's also helpful (i.e. actually worth tangible tens of millions of dollars) for the board of directors to be able to say "can we legally do X?" and get an answer better than "nobody really knows".

(And "can we legally do X" here is not the "can we legally dump toxic waste into the local swimming pool" that anti-corporatists think - it's more like "can we legally accept Generico's $56 per share premium tender offer, good only until 9:00, if four board members are on vacation?")

ASA

Re:The parent poster = retard; point by point belo

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI:

You have been trolled

You have lost

have a nice day

whether copyright works as intended

[sacrilicious]

Has anyone come up with a way to actually test if [copyright actually results in more public access to creative works].

It occurs to me that this is question might be partly answerable via simulation. A few of the knobs to twiddle would include distribution of disposable income, length of copyright, penetration of the copyrighted media, penetration of the internet, cultural barriers to acceptance of a given work, and incentive of creative people to create without the lure of enormous profit.

Update: Link renders well on Mozilla !!

[GerardM]

I notified GTW associates and asked them to remedy their non standard page makeup.

They were so gracious to fix things. It works fine for me (Mozilla). If you have seen the old version, you may need to reload the page..
Thanks,
Gerard

Re:The law isn't secret. It's just complicated.

[HiThere]

Those are excellent points... but if a law does apply to you, you won't necessarily know that it exists, much less where to look it up.

How old were you when you looked up exactly what constituted statutory rape? Was it before or after you needed to know? Where did you find out? Where could your have found out earlier?

Just because you need to know about a law doesn't mean that you will, or will have had a reasonable chance to.

But you can TradeMark a state's name

[kkirk007]

As the Commonwealth of Kentucky did. They trademarked the name "Kentucky" so that any use of the word in a business context would have to pay them royalties. This is the *real* reason why Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name, why the Kentucky Derby is now called "The Run for the Roses", and why you won't hear Neil Diamond's song "Kentucky Woman" played on the radio anymore.

I think KFC should try to fight this. The Supremes seem to be having a fit of common sense right now, and they might find that a state can't trademark their name. (imagine what would happen if EVERY state tried this?!!)

Re:Section 105 of the 1976 Copyright acts covers t

[kaltkalt]

Again, I never said anything a state does is per se bad. Just, historically, whenever a state has argued for "state's rights" it has been to do something bad (slavery most famously, and keeping sodomy illegal most recently).

Buy instead of grab?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imho, the court went from one extreme (private copyright on regulations adopted "by reference") to the other (condemnation of the copyright w/o compensation). A better case could be made if the copyrighted codes were paid for by the governments adopting them, as a work-for-hire or by purchasing them under the principal of Emminent Domain. Perhaps the purchase could be for a limited use, allowing reproduction only for residents within the jurisdiction...

Outright taking isn't ethical, and has the long-term effect that expert Code groups will not be able to continue due to lack of funding. Now who will write the building codes--Congress? State legislatures? City Councils? No thank you, I'll take BOCA, the NFPA, and UL any day--at least they know something about what they're trying to regulate!

And to break the bounds of America-centrism, I challenge Brussells to do the right thing, too! All the IEC specifications that you adopt into those mountains of Euro Norms--BUY THEM and place them in the public domain. The EMC directive alone applies IEC standards costing thousands of dollars into the regulations of every electronic product. How is a small manufacturing enterprise supposed to absorb such costs just to see what rules might apply (I anticipate the objection that you can "hire a consultant"--which costs even more--and you are the responsible party if you follow incomplete or erroneous advice).

Re:Section 105 of the 1976 Copyright acts covers t

[Fastolfe]

Not to indulge the off-topic much further, but this attitude kind of rubs me the wrong way. People resent government from a distance. Local and state governments still need to play a role here for one important reason: the people playing a part in those governments are people from your local community. Do you really trust a centralized government a thousand miles a way to make decisions about how your locality should behave? Would you really prefer that over letting your own community make those decisions?

There are certainly good reasons for the federal government to be there, and good reasons that standard laws should be there that are the same across all states, but lots of issues really need to be decided at the local scale. Some things are important to people in one area and not important to people in a different area. This is not a bad thing. A law might make perfect sense for one locality but might be horrible for another. Let them decide that on their own.

I don't think the User-Agent header cuts it

[yerricde]

when I said that I meant "standard desktop web browsers".

I'd call those "visual web browsers for PCs". To me the term "standard" means only that a given product implements a given specification.

A simple answer is to switch on information in the User-Agent HTTP header.

OK, so you're using User-Agent to negotiate a media type. That would work for browsers dedicated to a given medium. However, some browsers such as Mozilla can be made to support multiple media, and the User-agent: header doesn't always reflect this. How would you handle, say, Mozilla running in an 800x600 window (@media screen) vs. Mozilla running in a 512x384 window (@media tv) vs. Mozilla running in a 240x160 window (@media handheld) vs. Mozilla running in an 8.5" by 11" high-resolution window with discrete pages (@media print)? How would you handle wget? How would you handle a caching proxy? I understand the basics of what you're doing with server-side XSLT switched on HTTP User-Agent, but unless the browser sends some sort of X-Accept-Media request header akin to HTTP's Accept, Accept-Encoding, and Accept-Language headers, I wouldn't know what to switch on.

The point I've wanted to make so far is: what makes a table layout better than a CSS layout? Do you use <font> as well?

Re:I don't think the User-Agent header cuts it

[dekashizl]

Well I think we're arguing different points to some extent. I'm not claiming that switching on User-Agent solves all of the problems of the world, but my point was that the general approach of switching on client request parameters to generate appropriate content (for example via XML/XSLT) is a better solution than assuming CSS on a single document will handle everything for you. This is still an open problem, and I hope somebody comes up with a great solution for it. We were working on it for a while, but realized there wasn't a huge market for it yet (since 99%+ of users were sitting in front of a computer, and for those who weren't, usually a custom application for whatever other platform was more appropriate).

With respect to table layout (vs. CSS layout), I never said it is better. In fact, I said specifically in my previous post "It's two alternate ways to accomplish the same thing. Neither is right or wrong." Some old browsers support tables and NOT CSS, so in those cases table layout would be better. There's no simple answer for "which is better".

And yes, I do use the <font> tag sometimes when I'm dashing off a quick/temporary hand-coded HTML fragment, especially with relative size like size="+1" which is not easily indicated with CSS. Thanks for bringing it up; I will mention it in confession this weekend!

Re:Section 105 of the 1976 Copyright acts covers t

[rmohr02]

Also, when a law needs to be passed quickly due to a local crisis, Congress doesn't (and shouldn't) care.

Re:Section 105 of the 1976 Copyright acts covers t

[rmohr02]

Just another reason why we don't need states, and they sure as hell shouldn't have any rights.

Again, I never said anything a state does is per se bad.

Make up your mind.

How to do <font size="+1"> in CSS

[yerricde]

I do use the tag sometimes when I'm dashing off a quick/temporary hand-coded HTML fragment, especially with relative size like size="+1" which is not easily indicated with CSS.

To give you an idea: Replace all instances of <font size="+1">...</font> with <big>...</big>, which is semantically equivalent. (Likewise, there's a <small>...</small> inline element as well.) Or in CSS, use <span style="font-size:120%">...</span>. It may appear longer at first, but once it's CSS, you can bind it to a class.